Report: Baseball to sue clinic owner, associates
Major League Baseball planned to file a lawsuit Friday against the individuals connected with the Biogenesis clinic in south Florida that allegedly supplied players with performance-enhancing drugs.
The motive behind the suit is to compel the people associated with clinic, including owner Anthony Bosch, to cooperate the baseball investigators and to recoup lost money from the clinic and agents of prominent players, The New York Times reported. The suit also alleges that the image of the game was compromised by the PED scandal.
Should the legal action proceed, it would allow MLB to subpoena records from the now-shuttered clinic and seek despositions from those involved. The evidence would give baseball the opportunity to make a case against players suspected of doping. The sport has found it difficult to discipline or suspend players linked to doping activity but have not tested positive.
Whether or not the strategy will work remains open to debate, said Gabe Feldman, an attorney who has represented athletes in disputes with professional sports leagues.
"This is a fundamental shift in dealing with performance-enhancing drug issues," Feldman told The Times. "It's an attempt to attack the problem at its source, and that is something different from how the leagues have approached it until now. It's been difficult for the leagues to target the distributors because they have had no power over them."
Among the players linked to the clinic are Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees and Toronto's Melky Cabrera. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported this week that MLB is investigating all players connected with the Biogenesis clinic "equally."
