Jury Selection in Angels’ Wrongful Death Trial is Underway

Jury selection began this week in the wrongful death civil trial stemming from the 2019 opioid overdose of Los Angeles Angels baseball pitcher Tyler Skaggs.

The Skaggs’ family filed the lawsuit against the Angels organization alleging negligence in failing to stop an employee who supplied the fatal drugs.

The trial is taking place in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana and the Angels, a professional baseball team, is based in Anaheim.

Kabateck LLP managing partner Shant Karnikian, a complex civil litigation attorney, believes selecting an impartial jury from a pool of people living in the team’s hometown presents a significant strategic challenge for the plaintiffs.

“I can’t imagine jury selection here being easy because it’s in Orange County and you’re talking about the Angels,” Karnikian said. “You are going to have people that have some degree of a bias and who are Angels fans.”

Tyler Skaggs was 27 when he died in a Texas hotel room while on a team road trip.

Inside Mr. Skaggs’s hotel room, investigators discovered a number of pills, including a single blue pill with M/30 imprinted on it, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release. An analysis of the pill revealed it was laced with fentanyl, a powerful and often deadly synthetic opiate.

The medical examiner confirmed the cause of his death was a mixture of ethanol, oxycodone, and fentanyl intoxication. Skaggs was supplied with the substance that killed him by former Angels’ communications director, Eric Kay who was convicted and sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for drug distribution after Skaggs died.

“Mr. Skaggs did not deserve to die this way,” Northern District of Texas acting U.S. Attorney Chad E. Meacham said in a press release. “No one does. We hope this sentence will bring some comfort to his grieving family.”

Some 80 percent of drug-related deaths among youths statewide are deaths by Fentanyl overdose, according to the California Department of Education and a Substance Use In California report published by the California Health Care Almanac found that 2.9 million or 9 percent of Californians aged 12 and older have a substance use disorder.

However, in Skaggs’ case, he was an adult with free will.

“That’s something that the Angels have going in their favor that this was a tragic problem and it was Tyler’s problem but that still doesn’t excuse enabling it,” Karnikian said.

Kay’s criminal culpability is established with his conviction and incarceration however Karnikian predicts that what remains is for the plaintiffs to prove corporate responsibility.

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Tyler Skaggs’ Family Seeks $210 Million

The Skaggs family is seeking $210 million in damages from the team.

“Providing Tyler Skaggs with drugs wasn’t part of Eric Kay’s duties so it becomes whether the Angels organization knew or should have known that Eric Kay was doing that and if the parents can prove that, I think they win,” Karnikian told OrangeCountyLawyers.com.

The outcome of the civil trial is poised to set a precedent for employer liability in professional sports, potentially redefining a sports team’s duty of care when an employee is proven to have caused harm through actions outside their formal job description.

“What surprises me is the lengths that the Angels are willing to go to keep litigating this and fight the family on that issue,” Karnikian added. “It’s not the easiest thing to prove, but it’s not a very, very high bar either to prove that they knew or should have known.”

Photo Credit:
Shant Karnikian: Kabateck LLP website
Header Photo: Image FX AI creation