User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
Page rendered in 0.6032 seconds
48 querie(s) executed
| ||||||||
You are here > Home > Baseball Newsstand > Discussion
| ||||||||
Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Friday, July 15, 2022MLB to pay $185 million in settlement with minor league players over minimum-wage and overtime allegations
RoyalsRetro (AG#1F)
Posted: July 15, 2022 at 09:50 PM | 22 comment(s)
Login to Bookmark
Tags: minor league pay |
Login to submit news.
You must be logged in to view your Bookmarks. Hot TopicsNewsblog: Guardians win Draft Lottery, securing next year's top pick
(5 - 9:58pm, Dec 06) Last: cardsfanboy Hall of Merit: 2024 Hall of Merit Ballot Ballot (2 - 9:54pm, Dec 06) Last: kcgard2 Newsblog: Who is on the 2024 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot and what’s the induction process? (384 - 9:54pm, Dec 06) Last: Lassus Hall of Merit: 2024 Hall of Merit Ballot Discussion (179 - 9:54pm, Dec 06) Last: kcgard2 Newsblog: Forbes: For MLB, Las Vegas, And Oakland, The A’s Name And Brand Should Stay Put (45 - 9:20pm, Dec 06) Last: Walt Davis Newsblog: Hot Stove Omnichatter (103 - 9:11pm, Dec 06) Last: The Duke Newsblog: Braves trade Marco Gonzales and cash to the Pirates for a player to be named later (7 - 8:32pm, Dec 06) Last: The Duke Newsblog: Shohei Ohtani's secretive free agency is a missed opportunity for him and MLB (17 - 8:17pm, Dec 06) Last: the Hugh Jorgan returns Newsblog: 'I had tears, man': Brett's career on full display in MLB Network documentary (2 - 7:43pm, Dec 06) Last: The Yankee Clapper Newsblog: Update on Yankees’ Juan Soto trade talks: Teams talking players, but not close on agreement (39 - 7:28pm, Dec 06) Last: sunday silence (again) Newsblog: Red Sox trade Alex Verdugo to Yankees for three pitchers (28 - 7:13pm, Dec 06) Last: sunday silence (again) Newsblog: OT Soccer - World Cup Final/European Leagues Start (320 - 7:10pm, Dec 06) Last: Infinite Yost (Voxter) Newsblog: Reds, RHP Nick Martinez agree to $26M deal, sources say (10 - 5:53pm, Dec 06) Last: Walt Davis Sox Therapy: Interviewing For POBO (29 - 5:35pm, Dec 06) Last: Darren Newsblog: Reports: Astros, Victor Caratini agree to 2-year, $12M deal (1 - 5:08pm, Dec 06) Last: Walt Davis |
|||||||
About Baseball Think Factory | Write for Us | Copyright © 1996-2021 Baseball Think Factory
User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
|
| Page rendered in 0.6032 seconds |
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. Gold Star - just Gold Star Posted: July 16, 2022 at 02:04 AM (#6086902)I have no doubt that they were overpaid this time, but it's really a matter of degree. I'm sure they were working on contingency and there's always some degree of risk in that. And the really big lawyer payouts almost invariably come when they were working on contingency.
So no, minor-leaguers are still pretty screwed. Near as I can tell (not a lawyer, just an untrained loudmouth), teams just need to be more careful about meeting state law. Probably the more important change has been MLB's decision to provide room and board.
And of course in a settlement, everybody involved knows the lawyers will be taking their $60 M cut. The plaintiffs knew they were getting just $120 M. It's not like a jury awarded $180 M thinking it would all go to the players. There obviously are agency issues with the plaintiff's lawyers having an incentive to get the deal done but (a) it's the same incentive the plaintiffs have vs. the risk of a trial and (b) they're still incentivized to maximize the setllement/risk ratio.
If the award had been 180k, I might agree with you. There is a zero percent chance lawyers put in 60m of work on this case. Do you think they worked 100,000 hours on this case? That's like 50 work years. And that would still be over a million per year.
And it is not like there is some lucky sod here at the other end getting the rest of the 180m. It's being syphoned of of poor schlubs who were already being paid less than minimum wage for their work. It's borderline criminal exploitation. Just because it is lawyers using the legal system, doesn't make it any better than MLB using wage theft.
Yes, the system is seriously screwed up. What you're thinking about will make things worse.
Or found lawyers that would have taken less. . .
But the people involved in this lawsuit (almost definitionally) probably don't have that kind of money available. And that's going to limit their options. They wouldn't be able to pay the lawyers if they lost. (Or at least not easily or in a timely manner).
I suspect this is the kind of thing DMN could make a comment from actual expertise. Not sure what field he's in, but I'm pretty sure he was in employment law at one point.
Given the nature of the case it's possible it could have attracted some people willing to take the case pro bono (or pick up outside funding). Didn't happen.
Cute, but wrong. Any lawyer worth their salt, will be able to rather quickly assess whether a suit has a high chance of winning, or a high chance of a quick settlement. They don't take losing cases, so very, very few cases actually get subsidised in this manner.
David is a libertarian. I can tell you what he thinks, without asking him. Two (or more) people entered into a contract, and therefore it is definitionally fair. People who are not developmentally stunted or lawyers (but I repeat myself) should reject that framing out of hand.
Of course, David would also claim there should be no minimum wage, and that minor leaguers knew the deal when they agreed to it.
Tell me you’ve never worked contingency or known someone who worked contingency without telling me. You’re dead wrong. It is virtually impossible to assess the merits of a case with more than rudimentary precision AT THE INITIAL STAGE WHERE YOU TAKE IT ON and by the time you can assess it after discovery you’re already into the case for an enormous amount of time and, for true contingency types, money that you had to spend out of pocket. My ex-FIL had years of basically no income after expenses.
After discovery, yeah, the value of a case is sort of obvious, and that’s why there are so many settlements after discovery but before trial, but trial is less than half of the cost (often much less) so it doesn’t solve the problem of most cases being money losers or break even.
If you want high risk cases to be pursued on behalf of poor plaintiffs - I’m not talking about assembly line horseshit PI, but real cases with real risk of losing but a real chance at a big payout - you need big contingency fees - you can argue over whether it should be 20% or 40% or whatever, but no serious person thinks it should be significantly lower than the current US practice.
There’s also a related issue. Just to use an example from a few weeks ago from my practice, two lawyers told my friend his claim was worthless and wouldn’t take the case. I say, bullshit, they’re idiots. Let me make a call for you. I brush up my knowledge and confirm my memory is correct, call the other side on his behalf, voila, he gets $3M. Keep in mind he was literally about to write it off and get a goose egg. I spent maybe 5 hours working on it, though it was only because I’ve done this for 15 years and I’m very good at it that I knew the magic way to frame it to get a good settlement offer for the client. How much should I charge?
And I call bullshit on the second part of your response. Plenty of class action suits fail.
EDIT: Coke to 20 who makes my point with actual experience to back it up.
But those arguments still only apply from mid-Feb when spring training starts through early Sept when minor-league seasons wrap up (and maybe the AZ Fall League). 32 weeks, 40 hours a week, $7.25/hr is not quite $9300. But they were paid something, sounds like at least half of that, some more than that. We might be talking around $4,000-$4,500 for each affected player per season.
What years are covered? How many players? How many work hours? It would be nice if the article clarified some of these points. We do get this at the very end of the article: The suit divides the class into three groups: players who participated in spring training or extended spring training in Florida starting Feb. 7, 2009, Cal League players from Feb. 7, 2010 on and players from Arizona spring training and extended after Feb. 7, 2011.
So that's a lot of years but for most players it covers just the 6-10 weeks of spring training (extended). It covers the entire season only for Cal League players. Per the article, the judge had earlier declared they are year-round not seasonal employees -- which is interesting -- but the settlement doesn't seem to pay them for their non-seasonal "work" hours.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main