Man Falls Asleep At MLB Game, Sues MLB For $10 Million For Noticing
from the napping-for-fun-and-profit dept
Defamation laws can be a tricky thing. Public figures, for instance, can sometimes have a tough time navigating when the law doesn't apply, while the more crazy but less famous folks of the world seem to occasionally forget that truth is a defense against defamation. Add to them the times when entire organizations forget that parody exists and is protected speech and suddenly you begin wondering whether anyone ever gets a defamation suit right.
Well, if they do, it sure ain't Andrew Robert Rector, part-time baseball fan and full-time misguided-lawsuit-filer. See, Andrew fell asleep at a Yankees/Red Sox game, and ESPN's cameras caught him snoozing. Now Andrew is suing roughly everyone for ten million dollars. Confused? You're not the only one. The at times hard to understand filing appears to be relatively unconcerned with facts, you see.
Rector claims he was filmed, and defamed, at the April 13 game between the Yankees and Red Sox, at Yankee Stadium.
"In the course of watching the game plaintiff napped and this opened unending verbal crusade against the napping plaintiff," the complaint states. ESPN focused its cameras on him, Rector says, and then "Announcers like Dan Shulman and John Kruck unleashed avalanche of disparaging words against the person of and concerning the plaintiff. These words, include but not limited to 'stupor, fatty, unintelligent, stupid' knowing and intending the same to be heard and listened to by millions of people all over the world ..."
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John Kruck [sic] in his verbal attack insinuated that the plaintiff is individual that know neither history nor understood the beauty or rivalry between Boston Red Sox and New York Yankee [sic].And:
Plaintiff alleges that MLB.com, juxtapositions of photos and text of two men kissing each other and caption "sleeping Yankee's Fan cares not for your rivalry talk" falsely implied that plaintiff engaged in that type of conduct described or portrayed by the picture. In light of all the surrounding circumstances.Now, that particular passage had me monumentally confused, until I read Deadspin's post about this whole situation. They're postulating that Andrew and/or his lawyers appear to be mistaking a third party for ESPN, which is about as shocking as the sun rising in the east.
That completely nonsensical paragraph seems to be referring to this blog post on NotSportsCenter.com, which has nothing to do with MLB or ESPN. But anyway, Andrew Rector wants everyone to know that he's totally not gay, bro. Stupid, maybe, but totally not gay.Whoo-boy. In other words, in sum total, it's difficult to imagine how Andrew Rector and whatever crackerjack legal team he has hired could have screwed this up any worse. Probably best at this point to drop the whole thing and go away, particularly considering how the lawsuit has now streisanded this story and far more people are witnessing the plaintiff's actions than ever would have otherwise.
Filed Under: andrew rector, andrew robert rector, defamation, mlb, sleeping
Companies: mlb