Troy Machir,
The Sporting News:
A New York man who was caught sleeping at a recent Yankees game against the Red Sox on ESPN is filing a $10 million defamation suit against broadcasters Dan Shulman and John Kruk for their "avalanche of disparaging words," according to the New York Post.
Andrew Robert Rector admitted that he "briefly slept" while attending the April 13 game between A.L. East rivals, and when ESPN cameras caught him sleeping during the fourth inning, the Sunday Night Baseball announcers launched into what he described as an "unending verbal crusade" against him, with their "vituperative utterances" redistributed on the MLB website the following day.
Lorena Mongelli, David K. Li and Bruce Golding,
New York Post:
[H]is typo-ridden suit says Shulman and Kruk's "false statements" include suggestions that Rector is "not worthy" to be a Yankee fan and "is a fatty cow that need two seats at all time and represent symbol of failure."
It also says Rector was made out to be "a confused individual that neither understands nor knows anything about history and the meaning of rivalry between Red Sox and New York Yankee."
As a result, the used-car dealer claims to have "suffered substantial injury" to his "character and reputation," as well as "mental anguish, loss of future income and loss of earning capacity."
The Smoking Gun has
posted three pages of his complaint. Here is a sampling:
13. Nothing triggered all these assertions only that the plaintiff briefly slept off while watching the great game something or circumstance any one can easily found them self.
16. Plaintiff assert that defendants are guilty of juxtaposition of a series of fact that imply defamatory connection between them, and in doing so, they create a defamatory implication even though the particular fact are connected.
This jumbled mess - which reads like Rector's attorney translated it from English to some other language and then back to English - and the fact that his complaint is actually with readers' comments on mlb.com, not the TV announcers - will only increase the amount of ridicule heaped on Rector.
5 comments:
His writing and suit kind of give the lie to the old adage that baseball is the thinking man's game. Or at least as far as MFY fans go....
Considering the state of the complaint, his attorney should come in for a fair share of ridicule himself.
Big League Stew posted an article about this on Yahoo! and pointed to the fact that many of the accusations (once you consult your MFY-to-English dictionary) are relevant to what was posted in the comment sections of these websites.
Obviously, this would open up a HUGE can of worms if people were allowed to sue AND win lawsuits based on the nefarious activities of online commenters.
You mean to tell me online commenters had some not-nice things to say about this guy? Why, I'm shocked, I tell you!
And obviously, this guy had to go out of his way to see these comments. I don't believe ESPN or MLB actually identified him by name.
The way things are going this year, it might not be a bad idea to catch a few Z's and wake up in time for the winter meetings, or Truck Day 2015.
Maybe the guy has the right idea, wrong home team...
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