New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez has a long legal battle ahead of him in his effort overturn the arbitration ruling against him, but in the end it might not be worth it.
Lawyers see little hope in A-Rod’s legal team’s effort to vacate the 162-game suspension given to him by arbitrator Frank Horowitz for using performance enhancing drugs. Rodriquez has to prove that Horowitz misbehaved or handed down the punishment because he was biased or corrupt, which lawyers say he is unlikely to show due to the high burden of proof required.
It goes far beyond simply proving that Horowitz didn’t have sufficient proof of Rodriguez’s drug use or has been a life-long Red Sox fan. According to employment lawyer Robert Sheridan for Employment Matters,
To overcome this hurdle, A-Rod advanced four arguments: (1) the arbitration award does not draw its essence from the governing contracts; (2) is the result of arbitrator’s manifest disregard of the law and misconduct; (3) reflects arbitrator bias; and (4) the MLBPA (baseball’s union) breached its duty of fair representation to A-Rod.
Sheridan points out that in Rodriquez’s first point he ignores the “just cause” section of the Joint Drug Agreement, which gave Horowitz the ability to pass 50-game suspensions for how many times he believed Rodriguez used drugs. Horowitz “determined that A-Rod used three different banned substances (IGF-1, testosterone and HGH) at three different points in time throughout three seasons, essentially getting him to 150 games. Horowitz noted a precedent from a 2008 case that ‘separate uses are subject to separate discipline.’,” writes Matt Synder for CBS Sports.
As part of his appeal, Rodriguez is also suing the Major League Baseball Players Association, whose members would rather have him out of the union than support him reports Yahoo Sports. He is also suing the league. For Rodriguez it was legally necessary to sue the union in order the build his claim that they did not support him, but Tony Clark, head of the MLBA, told Yahoo that the suit is “completely without merit and we will aggressively defend ourselves and our members from these baseless charges.”
Also working against A-Rod’s legal team is that federal judges are unlikely to overturn arbitration, according to employment law attorney Daniel Schwartz.
In A-Rod’s case, it’s hard to see that the arbitrator made such a big mistakes in such a heavily arbitrated matter. (The punishment is harsh, but not so harsh that it is viewed as a “shock” to others.) The arbitrator is well versed in procedures and substance. Even if there are errors in the decision, it will still be upheld by the courts.
So, ignore the bluster from A-Rod’s attorneys about the strength of their case; whatever they may argue publicly, the appeal of his suspension is a very long shot — longer than the longest of A-Rod’s home runs.
While Rodriguez is still fighting the suspension, he does seem to recognize how slim his chances of winning are. But with the two suits against the union and the league still pending, he could use the suspension as vacation time away from the courts.