DraftKings’s Lawsuit Against MLB Over Sign Stealing Tossed Out
DraftKings’s Lawsuit Against MLB Over Sign Stealing Tossed Out
(Bloomberg) -- With its stadiums shuttered and its season in doubt, Major League Baseball got a bit of good news Friday as a judge threw out a claim by fantasy baseball players over the sport’s sign-stealing scandal.
News that the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox violated rules against electronic sign-stealing doesn’t give users of the DraftKings fantasy sports site a reason to sue for fraud, U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff in New York ruled.
Five DraftKings users had claimed in a proposed class action lawsuit that the teams’ use of electronic means to intercept hand signals by opposing catchers caused them to lose money on corrupted games. But the league and the teams argued “disgruntled fans” didn’t have a legal right to sue over rules violations and that the lawsuit fails to spell out a fraud on fantasy sports participants.
Rakoff said any connection between the teams’ cheating and losses by DraftKings players was “simply too attenuated” to support a lawsuit.
”Did the initial efforts of those teams, and supposedly of Major League Baseball itself, to conceal these foul deeds from the simple sports bettors who wagered on fantasy baseball create a cognizable legal claim?” the judge, an avowed fan of the New York Yankees, asked in a 32-page opinion. “On the allegations here made, the answer is no.”
MLB concluded in January that the Astros violated league rules by using cameras to capture the signs opposing teams’ catchers sent to their pitchers during the 2017 and 2018 seasons. The Red Sox are under investigation for similar actions in 2018. Sign-stealing without the use of technology is permitted and has a long history in baseball.
Rakoff’s ruling comes in what was to have been the second week of play for Major League baseball. The start of the season has been postponed and the remainder thrown into doubt by restrictions on public gatherings made necessary by the coronavirus pandemic.
The case is Olson v. Major League Baseball, 20-cv-632, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.