A ‘Sleeper’ in the Contest for Year’s Silliest Lawsuit

On the back of most every baseball ticket is boilerplate language. If you attend a game, you agree to comply with rules, you recognize you might get hit by foul balls and you consent to being photographed in the stands.

The average ballpark has dozens of live cameras panning and zooming across the crowd, so that should come as no shock. Nor should it come as any shock that if you do something stupid at the game, you might end up on national television.

But one sleeping fan at a Yankees-Red Sox game this season is suing Major League Baseball, EPSN, ESPN commentators and the Bronx Bombers themselves for $10 million. Why? Because he was caught sleeping on camera, and was gently mocked for missing the action.

According to Courthouse News Service, Andrew Robert Rector, a used car salesman, recently filed suit in Bronx County court. A grammatically-challenged partial copy of the lawsuit is available online. Rector alleges that he was defamed by MLB, ESPN and the Yankees and demands $10 million for his “injuries”.

The entire lawsuit is not yet available, but it is clearly frivolous for a number of reasons.

First, when you attend a televised ballgame, you implicitly and explicitly (on the ticket) consent to being videotaped and even commented on.

Second, the types of statements the commentators made, at least in the online video, couldn’t be considered defamatory under New York state law.   The statements were clearly color commentary and were not even declaratory, let alone false (“Did he sleep through the Beltran homer?”).

Beyond that, it seems Rector is suing MLB over nasty statements made in the comment section of its website. His lawyer rather clumsily tries to attribute these comments to MLB (“The defendant Major league Baseball continually repeated these vituperative utterances against the plaintiff on the major league baseball web site the next day”[sic]).

But the worst comments against Rector were made by anonymous online commenters, not any of the named defendants. If Rector has a legal beef, it’s with them, not MLB, ESPN or the Yankees.

But even those online comments couldn’t possibly fall within the legal definition of defamation, because they are clearly opinion: “Plaintiff is a confused disgusted and socially bankrupt individual [sic].” “Plaintiff is not worthy to be a fan of the New York Yankee [sic].”

The next time you’re enjoying a hot dog at a ballgame, surrounded by television cameras, think twice before doing something stupid. And if you do choose to do something that gets you noticed, don’t file a lawsuit over it. That would just be embarrassing.