OA549: Greedy Billionaire MLB Owners Stage Lockout

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:17 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is Thomas. Okay, and another thing about Dobbs. No, okay, we're not doing Dobbs part two.

0:01:26 Andrew: No, we're going to do a politics, mostly politics-free, classic deep dive today.

0:01:30 Thomas: Yeah. How's it going, Andrew?

0:01:33 Andrew: It's going well, other than, you know, dogs are going crazy. But

0:01:37 Thomas: Your dogs are barking. Well, we'll see if I can filter it out.

0:01:40 Andrew: It is, it's not when the law dog barks, it's when the law dog doesn't bark that you should be, there, there must be something there.

0:01:47 Thomas: Well, I imagine you're fantastic if we're going to talk about baseball law, right?

0:01:50 Andrew: I Mean, what better time than, you know, with a, uh, a labor stoppage for the first time in over 25 years, um, I'm gonna explain what's going on, what side you should be on, how to understand this, um, even if you're not a sports ball person. If

0:02:06 Thomas: I'm on the side of hockey. Is that a side I could be on?

0:02:08 Andrew: That's The side you could be on, if you're a law fan, and if you're not a law fan, I mean, you know, thanks for downloading the show, I have, you know, helps our advertisers, but

0:02:14 Thomas: You're not listening, so it's fine. Yeah. You're calibrating your phone or something, and so download a podcast. Right. Well, I'm excited. Let's get to it.

0:02:27 Clip: Down the law, down the law.

0:02:30 Thomas: But first, happy a announcement about some some certain lawyers of the Kraken variety.

0:02:36 Andrew: Yeah, that's right. Uh, you may think you have bought yourself an extra week's reprieve, but, uh, based on our recording schedule, uh, Judge Linda Parker, that is, sorry, that is the the judge in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan who handled the uh King versus Whitmer case. We covered the sanctions hearing, uh, live, uh, we, we covered it in tremendous detail. And you may recall that during the summer, she ordered that the Kraken lawyers jointly and severally. That means you can recover this from any one or all of them, and then, you know, kind of let them figure it out.

We're responsible for paying the legal fees for the city of Detroit and for the state of Michigan, and so, you know, after that order gets gets entered, what what happens is that the lawyers then submit their legal bills, right, and you kind of wrangle over it, and this is the order approving the sanction, so don't, so have to read orders backwards, but but this one works well. Uh, let's start with the bottom line, uh, that is, uh, that the the total sum is going to be about one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. That is twenty

0:03:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:48 Andrew: Two thousand dollars to to the state of Michigan, and one hundred and fifty three thousand two hundred eighty five dollars and sixty two cents to the city of Detroit. That was David Fink, who was hired by the city of Detroit, who did a masterful job in the sanctions proceedings.

0:03:48 Thomas: Not enough.

0:04:04 Thomas: I I wish they hadn't gotten such a good deal. I wish these states had not shopped around for good deals on law. I Wish they would charge them even more. You know, like it sounds cheap to me.

0:04:15 Andrew: David Fink, uh, and his law firm charged the city, gave the city a 10% percent total discount, right, and charged them $325 an hour for partners, $225 for associates, $75 for law clerks and legal assistants. Those are way below market rates. Yeah, a

0:04:33 Thomas: You're giving a discount to the city. I love it. What a great thing. Could you put a clause in your bill that says, I don't know why I have to say this, yeah, if, in um, some fraud huckster liar lawyers have to pay this bill because, you know, of their misdeeds, and they're, you know, just sanctions, essentially, all that, um, it goes from a 10% discount to a 50% surcharge.

0:04:39 Andrew: Springing clause I will tell you that I think this is another point in David Fink's favor, because I certainly know of lawyers who typically do fee collections cases who will, you serve a legitimate legal bill. Right. But have very little expectation that that bill is going to get paid in the absence of, you know, fee shifting or sanctions or the like. And the fact that he didn't do that, I think, is is illustrative here.

0:05:10 Thomas: First time I'm ever rooting for, like, come on, lawyer, rip them off, rip off your client.

0:05:29 Andrew: Yeah. So the order is fantastic. It is worth reading. We will link it in the show notes. Essentially, there is there's one substantive matter about which the court had to restrict its prior ruling. And that is the governing law seems to be very, very clear that the trial court cannot award sanctions in connection with the frivolous appeal that was filed in this case. Right. It was Stephanie Lynn Gentilla who mostly handled the appeal. It is up to the appellate court. You no longer have jurisdiction over the case once it's on appeal. So even though the plaintiff's caused the defendants to incur another 20 plus thousand dollars in expenses on appeal. That's up to the Seventh Circuit to determine.

0:06:18 Andrew: So, you know, that's a little disappointing. So they knocked off about twenty thousand dollars from the bill. And then I just love this. Can tell you that the Kraken lawyers sort of competently disputed the way in which you go about like fly specking sanctions orders. And Right? That is you look line by line at what the attorneys build and then, you know, you raise every objection that you can in terms of, you know, this is block billing. What is that? That means you just kind of like pick a day and say, oh, well, you know, we spent 10 hours working on case. Right. You know, it's insufficiently justified legal bills. Legal bills, as my clients will know, should have line items for the work that you do.

0:07:05 Andrew: Now, you know, again, the level of specificity is, you know, you can say things like review of state court filing, right? 1.2 hours, something like that. You wouldn't wouldn'T just say like worked on case, you Know, Tuesday,

0:07:21 Thomas: That's what my bill would be, uh, law, laud, did lot,

0:07:22 Andrew: 10 hours, you know, your joke, but but like this happens and it particularly happens at large law firms, and it happens because first-year associates come in. Many of them have never had another job, and their first couple of months are things like, you document review for the ExxonMobil merger. And I will tell you that, like, you know, you sort of get in the habit of like you write down 14.2 hours reviewed documents for ExxonMobil. And Right. You know that, you Know, nobody is going to look at your 14.22 hours there. Can. You know, You're the lowest associate with 135 lawyers working on the case, not speaking from experience or anything. Thing. And, you know, and so you can kind of get into the habit of, particularly if you're a very young lawyer, not understanding that, like, for most people, there's a real person on the other end of that bill, right?

0:08:17 Andrew: So Morgan is sitting here listening to this going, what are you talking about, right, like if we sent a bill to our clients that was just like worked on case, like our clients would hunt us down like the, you Know, the deadliest game, right like, and, and rightly And rightly so. Right. Because we work with real people and small businesses and that sort of thing. Happen anyway. But, As a result of these specific complaints, are these delightful moments where, you know, the court will knock like seven dollars and thirty eight cents off the bill. And there were 25 instances in which telephone conferences were rounded up to a quarter of an hour for, you know, a telephone call or an email for were billed by an associate while the remaining were bill by partners.

0:09:02 Andrew: The court will reduce the city's award accordingly, that is, by one thousand seven hundred and thirty-eight dollars and thirteen cents. So, you know, of this is is to say, again, the the Kraken lawyers are going to appeal these sanctions. But this is one of those things that is within the sound discretion of the trial court. And doing this right is is going to judgment proof this order. Right. To say, hey, look, like I took all of their arguments seriously.

I went through I looked at every single line item and and anything that might have been inappropriate. Appropriate. I knocked off even when it was, you know, seventeen hundred dollars on a hundred and seventy five thousand dollar bill. Some of the arguments were kind of silly, right? Like Lin Wood argued that the two hundred ninety two dollars and fifty cents an hour rate that Nathan Fink as a partner was charging was unreasonable. That's right. Nathan Fink is the, you know, son or younger brother, I forget, but, you know, he was six to 10 years out. So Wood points out that the state bar median rate for lawyers practicing six to ten years is only two hundred and fifty dollars. Right. Fink was admitted to practice in Michigan in 2011, so he had nine to ten years' experience on this case.

And then the court says, says, while true, the mean is $285, and the rate charged is below the median hourly rate for civil litigators, $305, attorneys practicing in downtown Detroit, $308, and attorneys practicing in Wayne County, $295. And lastly, this is a blended rate for all partners, with many of the partners having more experience than Mr. Fink. So, you know, try, again, the the order ends with something that can kind of feel the resignation in Judge Parker here.

0:09:53 Thomas: Unreasonably low, what a deal, yeah.

0:10:46 Andrew: But want more courts to be aware of this and to act on it is to say. So this is on page 26. An award to the city of one hundred and fifty-three thousand two eighty-five sixty-two is an appropriate sanction for the conduct discussed in this court's August 25th decision, which we broke down at great and joyful length, and is an amount the court finds needed to deter plaintiffs' counsel on others from engaging in similar misconduct in the future. Plaintiffs' attorneys, many of whom seek donations from the public to fund lawsuits like this one, see Defending the Republic dot org, have have the ability of the play the sanction accordingly, all of you together jointly and severally are to are to pay, you know, the hundred and seventy five thousand cognizant of the the fact that the bad actors, both plaintiffs and lawyers, are using the courts as a vehicle to raise money from credulous idiots is something that, you know, most judges, you know, I think of, like, the judge for whom I clerked, right, but don't even have to be, you know, sort of that much, of a conservative or a traditionalist.

There's kind of a feeling of decorum, right, right, and the idea is, you know, you're you're the judge, you wear a robe for God's sakes, right, like, you know, and and the idea is you don't really comment on the, you know, like, well, you know, the on their Twitter feed the defendants are doing it, but there's, there's kind of an institutional resistance I think to that, and and I am glad to see Judge Parker sort of paving the way for for other judges to say, hey,

0:11:13 Thomas: Yeah

0:12:13 Andrew: The court is not going to turn a blind eye to the fact that, you know, you're out here using your losses to raise money. I don't know if have figured out enough to do it. Like, I would love to see this be an issue that goes to the ABA, right? Like, I would love to be able to raise funds for lawsuits in which they are participating, That right. Seems like a straightforward case to me.

0:12:37 Thomas: I could imagine, uh, obviously, a version of this that I would support, which is like some poor downtrodden person being harassed by the system raise money to help them defend themselves, but you're just saying not the lawyers involved, or something

0:12:45 Andrew: Sure. Yeah. You just you just have a hard line that says no lawyer may raise funds for any case in which they are engaged, or or do any work. Oh, and no lawyer may accept any funds from any crowd fund, you blah, blah, blah, blah. And I know that we can do that without causing problems, because 49 states have, we've talked about this before, the rule that says a law firm partnership may not split funds with a non-lawyer, right? So lawyers are really, really good about, like, hey, this pot of money is off limit, right, like client protection funds. You know, when a client gives me a retainer, that goes into a separate IOLTA account, and I cannot touch that until, you I issue you a bill for, you know, actual services. And then I can deduct those actual services from the amount, but not a penny more. I've told you before, this is how lawyers get disbarred, right?

0:12:50 Thomas: Okay yeah

0:13:44 Andrew: Just by dipping into the wrong funds. So seems to me that you could craft a rule craft it overbroad and just say, yeah, the judiciary is not meant to be where you go to raise funds. I will point out, we didn't do that, right? Like, mothballed new clients coming into the law firm for about six weeks for us to write our Michael Flynn amicus brief. I shared that with folks on Patreon, but we didn't like, you know, fundraise and crowdsource and go, you know, like, hey, and if you if you do this, like the brief will be 25 pages. And, you Know, there

0:14:18 Thomas: Wait, but I'm not a lawyer. I should have done that for my brief. Dang it.

0:14:21 Andrew: You go. You should have. So.

0:14:22 Thomas: At the $3 level, you get to decide the curse words that I use for Justice John Roberts. At the $5 level, oh

0:14:31 Andrew: Where's the level I can get into that can control the curse words for Amy Coney Barrett? But it's a Conrad Michaels tier. There we go.

0:14:35 Thomas: God, that's an exclusive tier. Nice. Well, enough of this hot invoice talk, Andrew. Let's get to baseball law.

0:14:43 Andrew: Absolutely.

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0:18:46 Thomas: So, oh, you want to lead us off. Go ahead.

0:18:46 Andrew: Thomas, go ahead. No, no, no. You lead us off.

0:18:50 Thomas: Well, I mean, I heard the news. It was weird in the midst of, like, as a casual Dodgers fan, I do pay attention to the Dodgers a little bit, in the middle of regular baseball news of, oh, the Dodges have lost every good free agent that they had, have gone away and signed amazing contracts. Gosh, Scherzer's contract is, I saw a comparison that was his contract compared to the payrolls of baseball teams, and it was like, I want to say it was in the top ten. End. And then all of sudden it's like, oh, also no baseball, which was odd. And it said the first, I'm sure you're going to tell us the first owner's lockout. I guess there's two different kinds of lockouts. So what's going on? Is our baseball in jeopardy? Who do we root for?

0:19:09 Andrew: Yeah.

0:19:35 Thomas: Are the kids all

0:19:34 Andrew: I love all of that. Yeah, no our baseball is in jeopardy. A lockout as opposed to a strike. The way to think of a lockout is a lock out is an owner's strike. Right. It is a work stoppage by the owners that says you may not show up for work now.

0:19:36 Thomas: Right? Yeah. Ah, okay. Wait, the owners don't do any work though. What do mean? Oh.

0:19:54 Andrew: No, no, no. To the employees that says, you may not show us. We are literally and that's what it comes from. Like we are literally locking you out of the building. That's right.

0:19:56 Thomas: Okay. It's Like the keys to the Baseball factory. Like You. Okay. Yeah.

0:20:06 Andrew: Now, keep in mind that, you know, the this is the ideal time for owners to institute a lockout because the baseball players weren't showing up for work anyway, right? You know, you have the Arizona Fall League in a couple of, but like December, I mean, other than there may be a coupleof affiliated leagues in Australia or what have you, but by and large, baseball players are not playing baseball right now. So this is where the owners have maximum leverage. When players strike, they typically strike either in spring training or right before the beginning of the season because that's when they have maximum coverage. Right.

0:20:39 Thomas: Put The squeeze On It's

0:20:41 Andrew: Exactly. Nice. Nice baseball reference there.

0:20:43 Thomas: Bun. It's Black up. Like A yeah, yeah, double double meaning there.

0:20:46 Andrew: In terms of who you should root for, I cannot say this strongly, loudly, repeated enough. You should be rooting for the players. OK, it

0:20:58 Thomas: Wait, so Not the crusty old billionaire racists that probably own Most of the teams.

0:21:01 Andrew: It you are not joking with respect to that. OK, so so

0:21:04 Thomas: Not Really I Mean I like Magic Johnson, doesn't he kind of own the Dodgers, so somewhat, what other Other Than Magic

0:21:06 Andrew: No. Kind of owns like a couple percent. Yeah. Of the Dodgers. No, it is this. Remember, labor negotiations are a zero sum game between labor, in this case, the players and ownership. In this case, who are a super majority, right, of these are billionaire scumbag Trump supporters, right? The only exceptions I know of are Peter Angelos, who's just a billionaire scambag, right? And Stu Sternberg, the raise owner, who is a billionaire and also supports a lot of Democrats. But

0:21:11 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Worst People Oh. God. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

0:21:45 Andrew: Nevertheless, right? We talked about this, and I think it's because people People can't handle the like slight cognitive dissonance of, you know, Max Scherzer got three years and one hundred and thirty million dollars. And people are like, that's a lot of that's that's true. And and and then they're like, you get this kind of what I would call the the end of the bar talk, although nobody goes to bars anymore because of covid. But, you the I don't see why they get to be millionaires just for playing a game.

0:21:54 Thomas: Which Is insane, that Is insane. But That's Fine. Yeah, yeah. Swinging A stick at A ball.

0:22:16 Andrew: Yeah, I would play for half that. Right. You hear that all the time. Right. And and and I want to tell you, like, OK, Max Scherzer. Right, that the solution to this, by the way, is let Max Scherzer make one hundred and thirty million dollars and then impose the Elizabeth Warren, you know, billionaires tax. Right?

0:22:18 Thomas: Well,

0:22:35 Andrew: Like, yeah,

0:22:35 Thomas: Not for Baseball, Uh, you could just do a salary cap, but you know, I, I feel like you don't support that and I can't remember why, but it's time for another show. It's fine.

0:22:42 Andrew: But yeah, mechanistically, I just think you look at the NBA and admittedly. I don'T much about the NBA, I should say that. I would not hold myself out as an NBA expert or even a fan. But their trades make no sense because you have to trade like it, their trades are econ problems, um, and I would like not to have that imported, uh, into my baseball, so um,

0:23:02 Thomas: Well, Yeah. Whereas signing Scherzer to a three-year, $100 million contract is not an econ problem somehow. Okay.

0:23:14 Andrew: No.

0:23:14 Thomas: That's fine, well,

0:23:14 Andrew: No, but, What? I mean, is like, in, in most other sports, right, you have a kind of a rough distribution of talent is, is what drives trades, whereas, like, you look at basketball, and it is inscrutable. Like, a team will be like, "Here, have these four superstars," in exchange for a guy we're going to cut. Right. Like, yes.

0:23:30 Thomas: Yeah, apples to oranges because in the NBA, I think it's so much more individual driven, you know, like an individual can really make a team, so that's a, a, that, but in baseball and a team sport and hockey, it works out great. Like it's, it's a funny thing. I only bring it up and take time from the show. Cause I think it's a, a very interesting and funny irony that which is in Europe, the place that's like more egalitarian and socialist than we are.

0:23:37 Andrew: Yeah, it is. Yeah.

0:23:54 Andrew: Right.

0:23:54 Thomas: They in soccer, they don't have salary caps. And so it's mad world of, don't whoever you has the most money gets the best team, and in America, where it's like the opposite situation, where we're like the capitalistic, you know, money is everything, almighty dollar, most of our sports besides baseball have salary caps, which means, oh, I guess for anyone who's not into sports, it just means like each team can only spend an up to x amount on salaries. Baseball doesn't have that, and so therefore whichever team has the most money essentially, or wants to spend the most money, whichever owner wants to send the most, most money, like the Yankees can just buy a team. And it's funny that most of our sports aren't that way, even though we're more capitalistic.

0:24:33 Thomas: So it's, yeah, so it's this funny irony because it makes for a more even playing field in terms of the talent pool. I read an article about that years ago, and I always thought it was kind of funny that it works kind of opposite that way.

0:24:32 Andrew: We're that we're the capitalist. Yeah. I agree. I I think to me and again, this is sort of the I like taking the, you know, scientific method approach and sort of like controlling as many variables and introducing like one or two big changes at a time. What I would do is I would follow the NFL model. Right. Like in so many ways, the NFL model, I do like not know why this is not the model for all sports in terms of revenue sharing. Right, like because it allows places like Green Bay, Wisconsin, population eight, you know, to be one of the.

0:24:57 Thomas: Yeah.

0:25:15 Thomas: Who all own the team, by the way, like shareholders.

0:25:16 Andrew: Yeah, right. To want to be to be one of powerhouses like long term year in year out powerhouses in sport.

0:25:21 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, it's the best.

0:25:24 Andrew: Right? It's the best and and the the things that they do, uh, there's one simple change and that is, um, if, you had, like, right now teams exclusively own their media deals, right?

0:25:24 Thomas: In, Baseball.

0:25:36 Andrew: In baseball, so the Yankees own, uh, the YES Network, right, and the YES Network is worth like 87 billion dollars, um, and the Yankees get all of it, never minding the fact that, like, if the Yankees were forced to play like, like, Double A teams, the, the YES Network would not be worth $87 billion. If

0:25:36 Thomas: Okay. Right. Yeah. The other teams make a difference, yeah.

0:25:56 Andrew: You split just the revenue and, and literally like you if made a rule that was 70, 30, my guess is every team except the Yankees would, their revenue would go up and the Yankee's revenue would go down drastically. I don't have the math for that necessarily, but, um, but yeah, Yeah. So that would be my first step would be increased revenue sharing to reflect the fact that, like, you know what? If the Marlins or the Rays or the Brewers or the Twins don't come to town, you don't have a Yankees game to broadcast. Anyway,

0:26:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:29 Thomas: Sorry for that diversion, but Yeah.

0:26:30 Andrew: No, no, no.

0:26:31 Thomas: It would be bad for my Dodgers because we essentially bought a team, you know, five years ago or whatever it was, but it would be good for the, it's funny that, we recognize in sports, this capitalistic country recognizes in most sports that it would, would be better to have an even playing field, you know, literally, I guess, um, and and let everybody have a chance, whereas there are baseball teams, you know this better than I do, but there are certain teams that just will always suck because, no, the owners don't put the money into it, so they're just a suck team forever, it's not like football, we're like, okay, this is a suck team, but they're gonna get that number one draft pick, you know, the next few years, unless it's the Raiders and they'll, who will blow it, but, like, a

0:26:31 Andrew: No, it's great. Yeah.

0:27:08 Andrew: Yes.

0:27:08 Thomas: Team, they'll make good decisions.

0:27:09 Andrew: Yes, yes, they will.

0:27:10 Thomas: You know, so anyway, sorry for the diversion. Back to the, back to the strike.

0:27:13 Andrew: It actually is a pretty good segue. I And want to pick up on that thread. The other thing that I want to pick Up with is the other argument I hear for being anti player that is just, show me that you don't understand economics is the more player salaries go up, the more ticket prices go up. And that's just wrong as a matter of econ, basic economic theory says that you set your ticket price at the level that allows you to maximize your profits, right.

0:27:27 Thomas: Mm hmm. Yeah.

0:27:41 Andrew: So is the law of supply and demand. So insofar as demand goes up when you sign a high profile free agent and you can therefore charge more for the ticket, that may be a secondary relationship. But the idea that because your costs go up, the ticket price will go up is is not true. So this labor dispute is about should the money go to billionaire scumbags who, by the way, also get your tax dollars right, who get stadia partially or entirely built from tax dollars and bond issues, Right. Like it billionaires who are doing just fine or should it go to the people who actually make the product?

0:28:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:28:20 Andrew: Yeah. Right. And and and oh, yeah. Like, don't get me wrong on this. Like as somebody who has represented baseball players continue to do so, like many of them have, you the kind of terrible politics you would expect from somebody who is never had a real job in their life. And, you who nevertheless makes millions of dollars. Get it. But nevertheless, be on the side of labor. And and I do want to I guess I want to make one more point on kind of the overarching level. The average MLB career is five point six years. Right. And the minors suck. Like

0:28:18 Thomas: Or millionaire scumbags. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:28:52 Andrew: The miners suck. Like you get paid a below poverty wage until you hit triple A. clubs are starting to follow models where they realize, like, hey, we've drafted this 17 year old kid. Maybe we shouldn't force him to like eat Taco Bell every day while playing an A ball. So there

0:29:11 Thomas: Well, nothing. You had me until you lost me. Nothing wrong with talk about every day. But just

0:29:14 Andrew: Well, there is nothing. But but but

0:29:15 Thomas: Kidding. But why? That should be another angle of the revenue sharing, like downward kind of to the to the triple A system or whatever. The minor league system a little bit more.

0:29:19 Andrew: Well, the problem is that the bargaining unit here is the Major League Baseball's Major League Baseball Players Association, right? So low-level minors players are not in the union and the union is not obligated and does not represent them. So this remains a persistent problem where the two most powerful players that come into play here, the team owners and the MLBPA, the players association cares about the minors in the sense that most of their ranks will come through the miners. Um, but they don't care about the minores a lot. Right.

0:29:38 Thomas: Okay. Yeah.

0:29:57 Andrew: Um. And you know it tends to be pretty top heavy in terms of, uh who become players representatives. Right? So that remains an an externality in this labor negotiation. I want to pick back up the thread that you mentioned, which is baseball is designed to be an imperfect capitalist market. It's imperfect in a number of ways. The most obvious is that there is only one Major League Baseball League. To the extent that there are other competitors, right, in Japan, in Korea, in Mexico, A, they are seen as vastly inferior, and B, players are restricted from being able to just go there, right? Right. Like so if I hate my job or, I mean, all of my jobs, I'm self-employed here. So if Morgan hates her job, she can quit my law firm and go to any other law firm she wants at any time.

0:30:48 Andrew: Please don't. Please don't, Morgan. Please. But she can do that. If I'm playing for the Dodgers and I hate the Dodger's and I walk off, the Dodgers control my baseball career. Right. Until they release me, I can't play for anybody. I can't go to Japan. I can't go to Korea. I can't go to Mexico. That's a pretty big restraint on capitalism, as you might imagine. S sort of the less fundamental restraint. The biggest one is that when a team drafts or signs you as a player, they control 12 years of your life.

0:31:22 Thomas: Wow.

0:31:23 Andrew: Yeah, start they scouting kids at 12, So literally the entirety of which you've been alive, when you're these kids signing out of the Dominican at 16 or get drafted out of high school at 17 or 18, It's like basically all of your conscious life is a period for which the team will be able to control you. And here's what I mean by that. The team can keep you in the minor leagues for up to six years. Now, are there some mechanistic rules that come into play with the rule five draft, and this is not a baseball podcast. I'm not going to go into it. But but but yes, if they check the right boxes, They can keep you in the minor leagues without bringing you up to the majors and keep absolute control. Send you wherever you want. Time to go to Visalia. Time, time to go to Lubbock, Texas. You know, time to go to, you know, Mesa, California. Right. Like it is.

0:31:52 Thomas: Jeez.

0:32:12 Thomas: You know, I don't think I'm going to be a professional baseball player. I've changed my mind. I'm not doing that.

0:32:16 Andrew: They can send you wherever you want this. It happened to a friend of mine

0:32:21 Thomas: You might know him, Babe Ruth.

0:32:23 Andrew: Yeah. Was that you would definitely not know this person unless you are a super baseball geek. He was a pickup catcher in the Rays organization in the Rays minor leagues, and he was the backup catcher at Triple A. And I, I met him because I've talked about the, the Rays, the Triple A team is, uh, the Durham Bulls, you know, the most storied, uh, minor league franchise, Bull Durham, great movie, everything.

And they used to do a baseball kid, they still do a basketball camp, but when Alex was younger I used to take him down there and, you know, we would spend the weekend and the players would, would, would work with, uh, with the kids and it was great. I got to meet a lot of Raised, uh, minor leaguers that way who went on to become major leaguers.

Um, he left as a six-year minor league free agent, he was one of the coaches running the camp, left as a six-year minor league free agent, signed with the Detroit Tigers, uh, as a minor league free agent and they said, uh, hey, yeah, we're gonna assign you to Triple A and you are gonna be the first person we call up if, uh, you know, one of our catchers at the major league level gets hurt. So sounds like a pretty good deal. Um, they sent him to Double A. Um.

0:33:21 Andrew: And, and, you know, uh, how much cause of action he had? Zero, right? You, could then, you not sign a new contract the next year, uh, but your recourse for what level, you know, a team sends you to is absolutely nothing. So those are the first six years of your career, uh, and I said, you go minor league free agent after. If the team puts you on the 40-man roster and then calls you up to the major leagues, they then get six years of major league control over you. Those six years then fall into, under the old collective bargaining agreement, they fall into two categories. The first three years, the team can renew your contract at the major league minimum, is $570,000 a year. Sometimes they can go above that, but they don't have to. In those first three year, you are basically playing scale.

0:34:09 Andrew: You have no ability to opt out. You have no ability to negotiate your contract. It does not matter if you are the worst player in the league or the best player in the league. You get the exact same amount. For the next three years you have arbitration years, and you see this, this comes out in the paper, in which you are compared on various statistical grounds to other players with similar, similar experience, similar skill set, and similar outcomes, uh, and then the arbitrator, uh, the both sides will submit, uh, a, a number to the arbitrater, and the arbitrator's instructed to pick between the numbers, right? That arbitrator may not average, may not come up with a different number, he's got to pick, or she's got to pick, uh, the one number that represents you. And, and arbitrators do do not play by prices, right?

0:34:57 Andrew: Rules either, right. Like it's, uh, they do not, you know, sort of closest to what they think without going over it. They, they, pick the one that they think is the most fair, uh. On the basis of the comps. Um. Your salary goes up. Um. It, but it goes up in a way that is, uh. Again, highly artificial, your maximum exposure. And the reason we know this is we look at Max Scherzer, Max, right? Schercer just got $43 million a year to pitch. No pitchers who put up better records than Max Scherzer in arbitration do not get forty-three million dollars. I could go down a rabbit trail, but I'm not going to. I have just described to you the collective bargaining agreement that existed up until Wednesday morning, because it was a five year deal, and that five year deal expired December 1st, 2021.

0:35:54 Andrew: A collective bargaining agreement, under the NLRB rules, the National Labor Relations Board rules, labor agreement expires, you are to continue to operate as though the contract is in force. In fact, I'm to read directly. This decision is Richfield Hospitality, Inc., and it says it is clear that, I like this arbitrator already, following the expiration of a collective bargaining agreement, an employer must maintain the status quo of all mandatory subjects of bargaining until the parties either agree on a new contract or reach a good faith impasse in negotiations, negotiations. So what you saw a couple of days ago is the group, Major League Baseball, saying, nope, we've reached a good faith impasse in negotiations. How long did they let that go? They let that go zero seconds. Right.

0:36:46 Thomas: Well, I'd assume, I mean, they were negotiating up to the deadline, I would imagine, right? And then the

0:36:50 Andrew: They were indeed. But so I'm gonna include the letter written by Rob Manfred, commissioner of Major And by the way, another slight side note, if you don't know this already, although, you certainly you you you learned it through the Bud Seelig years, the commissioner of Major League Baseball is not somebody who represents like the fans or is like, you the guy and they've all been guys who, is going to do what's in the best interest of the of game. No, he represents the the owners. Right. He represents the teams. Yes, exactly. So Rob Manfred wrote a letter that is not true. It is almost entirely dishonest from start to finish. And it begins with, despite the league's best efforts to make a deal with the Players Association, we were unable to extend our 26-year-long history of labor peace and come to an agreement with the MLBPA before the current CBA expired. Well, that's true. They did not reach a deal. Therefore, we have been forced to commence a lockout of Major League players effective at 12.01 a.m. Eastern Time on December

0:37:16 Thomas: Billionaires.

0:37:47 Andrew: 2nd. That's not remotely true. True.

0:37:48 Thomas: That sounds not true based on what you've said. Yeah,

0:37:51 Andrew: They they were not forced to lock out the players at all. They decided to lock up the place.

0:37:52 Thomas: Sorry. We've been forced parentheses by our wallets

0:37:58 Andrew: Right. That is exactly right. So this is not a lockout. Is not a thing that happens automatically when your CBA expires, right? It is an affirmative tactic. It is the owner's equivalent of a strike. And, you know, you as I said, you comes from like literally padlocking the doors.

0:38:16 Thomas: As As a lefty, just the idea of owner striking is just so funny to me, that's it, we're not going to have them all the money, I, when the workers strike, it's like, we're going to the factory, you're not, we're not making your widgets, you know, like, we've done, owners are like, we are going to just stop, being the money havers, okay, you're going to miss us, there's

0:38:32 Andrew: Uh, That's right. And so as a result, right, we now have a situation. So you could have just continued, right, continued negotiating in good faith, but the reason owners don't want to do that is because as we get closer and closer to spring training, the players become in more of a position to be like, hey man, uh, we got a report to spring training in a couple of weeks.

So, you know, this sort of take it or leave it time, and it, and it gives them a stronger bargaining position by locking them out. The owners can say, you know what, haven't reached any agreement, we're not planning on starting the season on time, we're, and just going to continue to go ahead until, know, we get what we want of this out, out of these negotiations, um, uh, and by the way, right, in 1994, the owners successfully implemented, uh, a plan and, and played games with, uh, scabs, with replacement players, um, how do you get scabs, um, anybody who is not on a 40-man roster, right, is uh, not a member of the Major League Baseball Players Association. I should say, is or has been, right. It's, you know, if you've ever been on a 40 man roster, and I should say, a 40-man roster, baseball teams have a 26-man roster of who's eligible to play in any particular game. And then they have a 40-man roster of who's eligible to be on that 26-man roster.

0:39:54 Thomas: I want to do the scabs, but for the owners, like, can we find some scab owners?

0:39:58 Andrew: Would be, I, I volunteer, I will take on the grueling

0:40:01 Thomas: I want you to hear, here's what I want here. The billionaire owners protest ballads about their labor strike is what we shall overcome for.

0:40:03 Andrew: Hard work of being a billionaire. Oh, God, would he get Woody Guthrie's like, grandson now to come out and be like, oh, that would be amazing

0:40:12 Thomas: Yeah. I'm like a golden piano or something, like, you know, just ridiculous wealth, like, yeah, sing us a protest song, we're, we're on strike, come on billionaires.

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0:43:16 Andrew: Clayton Kershaw, who knows what jersey he will be on for 2022. But, you know, in A, in a Dodgers jersey, for MLB The Show 21, right. So you got to get both Kershaw's name and likeness, face, you know, photorealistic. And you have to get the Dodgers' intellectual property, right? He's got to be showing, they're wearing, you know, Dodger blue. Um, so the MLBPA controls the licenses for its players' likenesses, right? So if you go right now, go to MLB.com, uh, and pick your favorite team, and if you click on the roster, you will see on

0:43:21 Thomas: Hurtful hurtful okay mlb.com

0:43:52 Andrew: The roster, right? Uh, you go MLB dot com slash Dodgers. Right I went to, I went to Raise, because that's my favorite team, uh, if you click on the roster, you will, will see that all the headshots have been replaced with blank box, man. With, right, a totally gray blank boxmen, But if you go to coaches, right, all the coaches have their headshots on because, well, coaches and managers aren't covered by the MLBPA. And now, if you really want fun, click on the top prospects list, because the top prospect's list will have a mix of high level prospects who are on the 40-man roster, and that's covered by the MLBPA, and low level prospects who aren't, so you have some great out headshots and some knots, um, and

0:43:53 Thomas: I'm doing it right now sure blank box, man All right, finally, he's breaking through Oh, Yeah, my coach's likeness. That's what I really come to baseball for. Interesting.

0:44:39 Thomas: Yeah, I'm looking at

0:44:40 Andrew: For example, right

0:44:40 Thomas: It Man, I'm not on here.

0:44:42 Andrew: Yeah. It, if you think back to, I mentioned that the '94 four-player strike, players, right, low-level minor leaguers, those not on 40-man rosters, never on 40 man rosters, were eligible. And in fact, about a hundred of them became strike breakers, became scabs, played in games, and then went on to have major league careers, right. The most famous of that is, is probably Kevin Millar, right, who was, yeah Kevin Kevin Millar was on the uh 2004 uh World Series champion Red Sox, uh, you know, he co-host a show on MLB Network, right? Like, and, and he was a scab, uh, in '94, and so what that means is he cannot appear on any official World Series merchandise for the 2004 Boston Red, right, because

0:44:42 Thomas: Damn. Hmm. Keanu Reeves in The Replacements, of course.

0:45:33 Thomas: Really?

0:45:33 Andrew: The MLB MLB PA negotiates those and he was kicked out of the union for that. Yeah.

0:45:39 Thomas: Oh, wow. Forever.

0:45:41 Andrew: For forever, forever.

0:45:42 Thomas: Forever.

0:45:43 Andrew: And unions don't mess around. Those are sort of the the background conditions. Um, there are really two issues that are at stake here, the players' grievances, right? The reason that they didn't just re-up this contract, right, because I think if the players had come and said, uh, we'll, just continue with what we have, uh, that the owners probably would have said yes. No way to know that. Um, but the players have said, we think there are two problems with the current collective bargaining agreement. The first problem, and this is one you alluded to at the very beginning of the show, is there are too many teams that are tanking?

They're not spending any money on free agents, and they're stockpiling drafts picks, and there are going to go three, four, five years. The Baltimore Orioles have lost over 100 games each of the the last three seasons. Um, and they don't appear to be getting better on the horizon, right? They're, an embarrassment right now. Um, it's not just, you out of the goodness of the desire to see good baseball, it is, um, if the Orioles do not believe there is zero chance that the Orioles can make the playoffs next year, well, if there's zero chance that the Orioles can make the playoffs next year, what is their incentive to offer $44 million to Max Scherzer? Also zero, right?

Like they're going to lose 100 games whether they have Max Scherzer or not. So they might as well just save their money. And when they save their money, by the way, it goes back into the pockets of billionaire scumbags. We talked about that. So that's a big problem. And we definitely don't have time on the show to discuss all the the different ways to to go about that, um, but that's a structural problem. There's some ideas that that could be kicked around.

0:45:44 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yikes. Oh,

0:47:13 Andrew: The second issue, and this, I think, is the real sticking point, is goes back to how teams control those six and six years of right, absolute control over a player's life. Um, and the way in which they do is an issue called service time, right? So, so I said, you get three freebie years, right? And then you get three arbitration years.

But that sort of assumes that you join a team on April 1, or, you know, right out of spring training, that, like, you go from, I, 2021, finished in AAA, 2022, I'm going to go to spring training, win the job, and start the season in the major leagues. Leagues. Um, it used to be that way, like back in the 70s and 80s, but but recently, um, because of merit and because of manipulation, which we're going to get to, um, will start, would end 2021 in Double A, uh, have destroyed Double A, probably are ready, uh, to start the season in the majors, but the team will say, look, we're gonna start this guy off in Triple A, we're just want to polish up a couple of things, and then we're going to bring him up at mid-season. And I know you've seen that, right? There may be a developmental reason for doing that, but there was also a very, very strong financial incentive reason for doing that.

And that is, if you come up at mid-season, that doesn't count as a full year. That counts as half a year. Um, and so you delay starting that arbitration clock by another full season. There are a couple of ways around this. There's a concept called Super Two that involves people that have two full years plus are in the top 10% of partial service for the third year.

0:48:52 Andrew: The point is, is that these are math problems. Teams can figure it out and then teams can say, OK, if we bring up X guy after Y date, June 15th, they're not going to go super toe. They won't qualify. And we'll basically get this half season for them at the major league minimum for free. And from an economic standpoint, of course, you do that. And as Right. You pointed out with the contrast with basketball, the difference between even if it's a huge upgrade, the The difference between bringing any one player up, even if they're an amazing player, is unlikely to outweigh the financial costs of them hitting free agency a year earlier.

0:49:37 Andrew: Take again my team at Tampa Bay Rays, although they just signed the best prospect in baseball, Wander Franco, to a 12-year deal longest in Rays history.

0:49:44 Thomas: Man. Congrats. Hmm.

0:49:45 Andrew: And I'm super excited about it. But Wander Franco, Wander Franco was ready to play shortstop for the Rays coming out of spring training. They Right. Waited until midseason to bring him up in order to start his service time clock to delay that by by another year, because had they not reached a long term deal with him, then after two and a half years, he would have been eligible for arbitration. And would have started commanding more in salaries. And after five and a half years, he would have been eligible to go free agent. So as you might imagine, the Major League Baseball, this is their second issue, what we call manipulation of service time, right? The idea is, hey, if I'm not good enough to be in the majors, that's fine. But don't keep me down at AAA for six extra weeks so that you can avoid paying me in arbitration, that arbitration right, was meant that this is really, you know, kind of like a Cobra effect, reverse, you know, perverse incentive of teams are keeping players down save money and not.

0:50:45 Andrew: And and and then paradoxically, it becomes the best players get hurt the most because teams most care about their service time. If Right. A guy seems like he's just going to be, you know, a fringe player, you don't really care if Uh, you 26 year old triple A first baseman, you'll bring him up April 1, right? Because the likelihood that you're going to want him past age 32 is very low. Anyway, uh, but a 20 year old uber prospect, you absolutely wait those extra, you know, six weeks. So, so MLB's proposal to that was, um, to have universal free agency by age, which on its face, that seems like a pretty reasonable response, except that they set that age at 29 and a half, right? Yeah, and immediately, right, as you know, no, like

0:50:58 Thomas: Yeah, we're Seems pretty late.

0:51:32 Andrew: That. Yeah. A player's peak years are between 25 and 28. Right. By the time that you're 30, everybody, like the actuarial tables are clear. You have a 50 percent chance of being out of the league of each and every year past age 30. Remember, right? Average career only five point six six years. Uh, you know, it's it's sort of easy to point to, you guys who have continued forever, um that's

0:51:37 Thomas: Mm-hmm.

0:51:54 Thomas: Right. But those are the ones you recognize because they're good and they continue a long time. You don't think about all the ones that just left that you didn't really notice.

0:52:02 Andrew: That is exactly right. So the issue is, uh, 29 and a half, uh, a, uh, is going to mean that players will never get to put their prime years, uh, out on on something resembling a free market and therefore will never get, you the kind of contracts that you saw, like Alex Rodriguez, get the extension that you Saw, you yousaw Mike Trout sign, right? Like these are superstars in their prime who either went free agent or threatened to go free agent. And that's where you get,you know, kind of the the market shattering, expectations you know, put an asterisk for a couple of outliers like, Max Scherzer, who, you know, was very, very good. He's 37.

0:52:21 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Isn't he 38? 37? Yeah. Jeez. It's a good contract to sign at that age.

0:52:44 Andrew: Yeah, it really is. Roger Clemens did this right. You know what I mean? You know Roger Clemons was a was Hall of Famer willing to go mercenary for the last couple of years. And and so, yeah, you know, you can get some some goofball situations. But again, from an economic standpoint, you want to have the threat of impending free agency while, you know, your best years are are ostensibly still, you ahead of you or at least imminent. And also consider this is not really giving up much in the way of control. If you have universal free agency at twenty nine and a half and you've drafted a kid at 17, that's we can do the math. That's twelve and a Half years of control, even out of college, 21, 22, you know, you're still talking about, being able to have kind of absolute control for for seven or eight years over a kid's life.

0:53:09 Thomas: Mm-mm.

0:53:22 Thomas: Yeah, it feels Like it should be 24 or something, or 25 or, you know, around in that that range, right?

0:53:38 Andrew: The Problem, and this is where kind of the rubber meets the road, right, is that the player's interest is in getting to the closest thing to a free market as soon as, as early as possible, right. Having competitive situation where at least 30 teams can bid on you if they one that drives up salaries, and we grew that, but the problem is is that are then sort of running up against team expectations, right, and that is most fans want to see a continuity of team over time, right. You're a casual Dodgers fan, you can, you can name a dozen Dodgers right who who have had, a you kind of five years ish with the team that have sort of overlap, right, like, and that feels like.

0:53:38 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:54:19 Thomas: We had to play all of them in the playoffs this year, like each team, it was like, oh, they're hot, yeah, forgot about that guy.

0:54:24 Andrew: But but, if the team had 70 percent turnover every year, all of a sudden you get that like I'm rooting for laundry effect. Right. So, you this is where that balance between kind of maximizing the economic opportunities and and understanding that the macroeconomic effects of, would this create disincentives for consumers to enjoy the sport of baseball, you know, where that will potentially come in? And obviously that that's going to overlap strongly with the teams that are tanking. Right. And players will have, I think, the better part of the argument on let's do again, know, follow the NFL model like it is. There are very few NFL teams. I like that the Jets. But, you Know, like there are very fewer NFL teams that you look at and go year in, year out.

0:55:10 Andrew: This is not a team worth watching. You Detroit's pretty bad.

0:55:10 Thomas: And they're usually because somebody is making just consistently bad decisions and won't let go of power that was like the Raiders for forever

0:55:19 Andrew: Yep. Yep. The Raiders for forever. That's exactly right. And now, again, you know, Brady Gronkowski is kind of up. It's kind of a unicorn situation. But like, Tampa Bay was if we were recording the show two years ago and we're listing, you know. Perennially terrible football teams, we would have listed Tampa Bay. And I am not a Tampa Bay football fan, despite being a Rays fan. I'm a Ravens fan. We're perennially great, that makes me happy. Um, but yeah, like you look at the NFL, almost fans of almost every team have reason for hope almost every season. Uh, unless you like the Browns, but I mean, hey, like they're, you know, that they're sticking around there this year, right? Like it is, um, and baseball would do well to copy that model.

So here's where we are, we have months, uh, in which the owners are going to play hardball, uh, after that point, that that's where the dynamic will start to change, and the owners will have to take seriously, are we looking at setting up a potential scab season, or, uh, you know, are we willing to, um, know, reach more of an accommodation, uh, with the players. Um, one of the things

0:55:22 Thomas: Yeah mm-hmm sure

0:56:25 Andrew: That certainly is open to ownership by locking out the players is they can extend back spring training, right, the kinds of deadlines, spring train is basically the month of March, uh, the season basically opens on in April. One, you know, you play around with some days at the margins, uh, but but that's really, you, of typically what happens, uh, but there's nothing to stop, uh, as a, as a condition, uh, from owners from from saying all right, well, we're gonna have spring training in Aprril and we're going to start games. And we'll play a shorter season this year. Can do that. So have about two months, December, all of December and all of January and the beginning of February where the teams are going to play hardball and then they're going to come to an inflection point as to what the 2022 season, what they're willing to do in terms of where to stand on leverage for the 2022. season, uh, I, want to point out there is a ton of money in baseball right now, particularly post-COVID, um, this should not be a problem.

0:57:20 Thomas: Love when we get your percentages. What, what percentage predictions would you put on? What odds on the outcomes here?

0:57:21 Andrew: Oh. Uh I am gonna say, uh, if you include, uh, delay to start the season, but you know, a month or less yeah as, as a, uh, we play 2022, um, I'm gonna say 75 on on uh, that that we reach a positive outcome.

0:57:33 Thomas: Still, yeah, sure. Okay. What are the odds on that scab season? That feels like such a doomed proposition. Who's going to watch a scabseason?

0:57:49 Andrew: Know, both sides have reason to look back at '94 and go, um, this is not like, you know, oh my gosh, Democrats will never go over the fiscal cliff or whatever, right, like you look back in it and the games were not an embarrassment, and they were able to field teams and the players who who crossed picket lines. You know, we talked about the case of Kevin Millar, but there were 100 of them. And players who went on to play for World Series teams, right. There was a, an outfielder for the Yankees. And yeah,

0:58:15 Thomas: Yeah, there'd be some novelty, I guess. I just think things have gotten a little more superstar-oriented since then, you know, and you want to see your stars even that much more than in 1994, I think.

0:58:26 Andrew: I Think that's right. Right. But I would put into the likelihood of a scab season is the continued inability of MLB PA to really message itself very well, which has has been a problem because I can tell you and I did what the owner's proposal is. Right. Universal Free Agency at twenty nine and a half. I can't tell you what the player's proposal was. Right. Like the player's response to Manfred's letter. There's a reason I didn't read from it because it was just nonsense. Right. It was it wasn't nonsense. It Was just like, yeah, It was just like, well, you know, this was an unprecedented step, and you know, and it was just like, right, but tell us what your two bullet points are, right? Tell

0:58:38 Thomas: Yeah. Really? Huh. Hire Andrew. Come on, players.

0:59:09 Thomas: Yeah.

0:59:09 Andrew: Us what you're fighting for, and then I'll come on this show and I'll say everyone should line up behind these two player proposals, uh, but we don't know what they are

0:59:11 Thomas: Mm hmm. Yeah. Boy, this really does feel like a parallel to Democrats. Yeah, but you still should be siding with the players, everybody. Like we get we get that they messed up the messaging here, but it feels feels very similar. Yeah well, but like but honestly, it's so easy for the average person out there because you see the players. You see the wealth often. I don't know if they do this for baseball, but for hockey, they do a lot of the, oh, here's the players walking into the facility before the game.

0:59:25 Andrew: Yeah it really I like, I like underdogs, so that's why I'm race fan, that's why I'm a Democrat

0:59:45 Thomas: Do they do that? That's a big shot for some reason in hockey because they dress nice and whatever, but that's when you usually kind of see the displays of their wealth a little bit. You don't really see that for the owners, and if you did, it would be 10 times more embarrassing, like the amount of wealth that these actual owners have, and it would be in your face how ridiculous it is. But they're kind of in the background, so you don't think about it, and you think like, oh, how could these millionaire players want more money? But uh, you know, as you say, there's, it's a, it's a zero-sum game and the other side is, I can't name an owner, but Bob Craft, you know, that's a, that's NFL owner, but you

0:59:45 Andrew: Yep yep yep right yeah Jerry

1:00:20 Thomas: Know you know what I mean, yeah right

1:00:20 Andrew: Jones uh yeah Did you see like Cliff Kingsbury doing the uh, the NFL draft from his yacht? I mean, you know, it's it slips through occasionally, but like, look, look, we somehow, you lower class white men voted in a president who literally sits on a golden toilet contractors for the gold. Yeah. And and somehow like, you Know, the the average Trump supporter is like, right. But he stands up for me.

1:00:27 Thomas: Yeah that he didn't pay the contractor Uh, for installing, yeah, yeah

1:00:48 Andrew: And it's like he has a golden toilette. All right. Anyway.

1:00:48 Thomas: He's an everyman, yeah yep Exactly, well that was a lot of fun, baseball law everybody, I'm very curious to see how this goes and I wish the players would take your advice and get messaging better so we can win the Senate bet, no I don't know what I'm

1:01:08 Clip: And thank you, Let's go!

1:01:09 Thomas: And now it's time to thank our Hall of Famers, our all-time greats on patreon.com/law. We're at the beginning of the month, and we're on the quintile method this month. That's right, right, those of you who live for fifths of things get excited, whoo, hype, uh, and I believe it's your turn first, Andrew boy.

1:01:23 Andrew: All Right, yeah, and so these are uh new five dollar patrons, so uh remember if you're going to change your name to interact with other people, just kind of look, you know, see who's around you on the list, and uh you can still uh play along, it's a bit longer game now, but but still fun. All right, thank you to OA Live Show Mardi Gras 2022 in New Orleans, that is a really really strong argument, I gotta say, um

1:01:50 Thomas: Depends on the the Omicron situation, but yeah

1:01:50 Andrew: Yeah. Star Trek is better than Star Wars, you're damn right, a Streetcar Named D's Nuts, that's So good, Vortex's Plural Is Riveting Story Like Andrew and Thomas But More of a Butt Clencher in Suspense, I forgot, forgot to change my Patreon name after it got read the first time and I'm still deciding on a new one. Well, now you got another month. So, Andrew Klotzenbucher, LT Salty, Seattle driver on YouTube found out the hard way that Washington state does not require employers to pay out PTO upon termination, wow, I didn't know that. Seven Shy Soldiers Salting Salmon Shoulder to Shoulder. Some say Legal Eagle is a discount John Krasinski, I say John Krusinski is a a discount Legal Eagle, I uh I don't know who John Krasinski is, but uh Some

1:01:58 Thomas: Yikes. Nice. Uh Oh my god, Andrew.

1:02:37 Andrew: Say we are a discount legal eagle, uh, yeah.

1:02:37 Thomas: The office You never watched The Office? John Krasinski is a B minus talent who who has won the lottery, essentially, and is now richer than even many baseball players that we talked about.

1:02:41 Andrew: Sorry, ah. So yeah. Discount Legal, legal I can see that Matt Dunlap, help I'm frozen to the Kazakh Step. Wood Duck Would Duck a Wooden Duck, but Would Wood Duck Duck a Duck Duck Ducked by Duck Duck Goose. At AtomicPenguin7 on Twitter, that was nice. I, Joseph Vigiano, Dr. Scoop Little, Welcome, Dr. Scoop Little, Doug and Heather, Mr. and Mrs. Pusher, Comedian Aaron Trahan, At ComedienneAET on Twitter, that has come to Madhouse Comedy Club in San Diego, and now here's something we hope you'll really like That was my best Rocky and Bullwinkle voice Oh,

1:03:20 Thomas: Nice. All Never seen any of it. Don't know anything about Rocky Bullwinkle, but that's okay. Your Honor, I think you're taking selfies wrong. Donna's Tropic Skin Care for UK patrons only. Do you have any of those except me? Thanks, guys. Yes, we do, we have quite a few of those, so check out Donna's Tropic Skincare, hand woven night safe reflective scarves by KellyWovett.com for nice

1:03:49 Andrew: I have been there. Her stuff is great

1:03:51 Thomas: For a fun fantasy story, read The King's Own by W Marshall. Now on Amazon, that thing in the attic, the fat Jedi eating cake and drinking Emperor's Brewery beer in the Death Star canteen. Liberals own guns to support root cause mitigation, not ineffective gun control. Sean McGovern, support Decarcerate, working to end mass incarceration in Arkansas, DecarcerateAR.org. John Spartan, you are fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality.

1:04:16 Andrew: Until then.

1:04:20 Thomas: Tell Morgan Gattam's son, Ray, pizza school the corgi. Pizza school cracks me up every time. The cutest corgi in this OA quintile are your money back. Nice. Nailed it all around. Benjamin Crom, legal eagle is so handsome. California employment, work accident or litigation questions. Call or text attorney David Nitka, 310-776-5879. Again, 310-776-5879. The Smiths do take DNS advice from our live streams. Oh, thank you so much. Top patrons. Look forward to the second quintile next week.

1:04:53 Clip: Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar will eat you.

1:04:59 Thomas: Now it's time for T3BE answer time, um, does improbable streak continue

1:05:05 Andrew: Thomas, this was a man was building a home on a vacant piece of land, wanted to remove tree roots that stretched from a tree stump in the neighbor's yard to his own yard. So he decided to go over to his neighbor's yard, dig beneath and remove the tree roots. The digging caused no impact on the neighbor's land and did not interfere with the neighbor'S use or enjoyment of his land. But nevertheless, the neighbor sued him for trespass. Who is likely to prevail? You went with C, the neighborhood, because the man intentionally entered the neighborÕs property without permission. And IÕm not going to beat around the bush, Thomas. Thomas, that is exactly right.

1:05:41 Andrew: Your streak continues. Yeah. A trespass is the intentional invasion of the land of another. The man intentionally invaded the land of his neighbor. Right. He over there and dug into it. The fact that it's underground. Right, like you control the the wedge shape of your land all the way through to the core of the earth.

1:05:41 Thomas: Right whoo so no yeah okay oh wow, I want to get to my ownership of the earth's core, can I go dig down and find some of that

1:06:01 Andrew: Well, do you remember when you asked me at the live show the like riparian water rights question? Yeah. Like this comes into play. Right. Because I,

1:06:06 Thomas: Yeah yeah what you nailed you a-hole, I thought I was gonna, gonna like stump you for, as a joke, and you're just like, yep, it's this answer, oh good times can't wait to get back to that

1:06:17 Andrew: I, oh man. Oh, absolutely. But yeah, so like underground aquifers often stretch between multiple pieces of property. So, you know, it does come into play, um, you digging under the land, uh, counts as a trespass you

1:06:19 Thomas: Yeah good I right about that being another tort or not, is it trespass when you interfere with the use enjoyment of the neighbor's property

1:06:34 Andrew: Oh no, that is nuisance, you were a hundred percent correct, different so that was the B answer, was the man, uh, because he did not interfere with the use and enjoyment of another's property, those are the elements of the tort of nuisance, um and and there would would not be a claim for that, uh, but here, right, again, remember, 13th century Saxony, the idea is, uh, invading upon the property of another is, you know, you don't have to show damages, you just have to be like, no, part of, part of the bundle of sticks of my property rights when I own a piece of property is my right to kick you off of it

1:06:36 Thomas: Oh awesome yes yeah nuisance I knew it, okay, all right yeah you've

1:07:10 Andrew: Um, that's a stick that I have, and when you come over onto my land without asking me, you have, uh, run afoul of that stick Yeah, you've touched the stick. So correct answer.

1:07:17 Thomas: Touched my stick yeah Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. A little tricky. I mean, I guess in, in the end it was easy. It was the straightforward answer, but I, you know, a little, little tricks there, the underground thing for one, um, the fact that there's not really damages exactly to show for it. I was a little worried that it's going to be something like that. Like, okay, well, what's the, you Know, what do you win in essentially here? Like put the, put the roots back.

1:07:40 Andrew: It would have been a very, very difficult question if let's take out the A, because A is the man because the decision to remove the tree stump roots was reasonable. If that had been the man, because the invasion did no damage, you know, caused no damages to the neighbor. I think that would have been a very, very compelling, attractive distractor.

1:08:00 Thomas: Yeah, but it still would imply that you're like allowed to go stand in your neighbor's yard as long as it doesn't cause any trouble. You know, like if you tell your neighbor, hey, when you're at work, I just go stand in your yard. I don't do anything, but I just goes to the on your property. It's like, okay, you're not, you know, not causing any harm, I guess, but it's still weird. Like we still, yeah, we should be able to be like, don't go. That. You know? Like that, that makes sense that that's a right that you have.

1:08:14 Andrew: Well, you're harming your harm. You're touching the stick. Yeah, don't do that. That is exactly right. Borders on the D answer, which is the neighbor because the man did not give reasonable notice to the neighbor of his intent to dig up the tree roots. And here, the textbook is actually a little funny. And this is the first time ever. So I want to give them credit for the funny. Uh, they say D is incorrect because notice that one is going to commit a tort does not make the commission of the tort. Okay, notice would not change the result. For example, if A said, "I'm going to punch you in the face" to B, and if thereafter A punched B, A would still be Liable for battery. Yeah, I think

1:08:34 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. That's pretty much exactly what I said. Instead, suss that one out. All right. I feel like a lawyer today, Andrew.

1:09:03 Andrew: You did great. You should. You

1:09:05 Thomas: Good. Well, I win again, but who's our honorary also winner for this week's T3BE?

1:09:05 Andrew: Did great and All right, Thomas, this week's winner is Justin Giglia on Twitter. That is at Hot Duck Soup. Sounds lovely. Who says, "See, trespass is intentionally entering or causing a thing to enter the land of another without consent. Harm is not a necessary element of the tort of trespass. I'm not hurting anything is not about it. Valid defense. To Get off my lawn." So, dead right. And pretty funny. And congratulations, Justin Giglio, on being this week. Winner everyone give him a follow that is at hot duck soup on twitter and uh congratulations justin on being this week's winner

1:09:32 Thomas: Yeah.

1:09:46 Thomas: And that's our show. Thanks so much for listening. Remember, always side with labor and not the crusty billionaire racist owners of baseball. And hopefully we get a good resolution to that. And we'll see you for Rapid Response Friday.

1:09:58 Clip: I move for a bad court thingy. You mean a mistrial? Yeah, that's why you're the judge and I'm the law talking guy.

1:10:31 Clip: www.openargs.com. Be sure to join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Yodel Mountain and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media LLC, all rights reserved. It is produced with the assistance of transcriptionist Heather Leverage, production assistant Ashley Smith, and additional contributions from Morgan Stringer and Debra Smith. Special thanks to Teresa Gomez, who runs our live shows and heads up the OA Wiki, follow at OA Wiki on Twitter. Additional thanks to the moderators of the Opening Arguments Facebook community, Emily Waters, Alicia Cook, Eric Brewer, Natalie Newell, Brian Ziegenhagen, and Teresa. And finally, thanks to Thomas Smith, who edits the show and created the fabulous theme music, which was used with permission.