Marlins Being Sued By Would-Be Owners

MIAMI, FL: Exterior views of the New Miami Marlins Ballpark in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

It would be absurd to think that the Marlins would be sold for $10 million. Absurd! And yet, here we are, with a lawsuit on our hands.

Feb 22, 2012 - David Samson is the president of the Miami Marlins. In 2008, David Samson was the president of the Florida Marlins. In February of that year, Samson served as the auctioneer at the Fourth Annual Awards Banquet at the Diplomat Country Club & Spa. It was a team function, see, and an auction was a big part of it. To begin the auction, Samson put the Marlins up for sale, available to bidders at a starting price of $10 million. Samson was probably joking. Somebody bid. That somebody was apparently not joking.

And now that somebody is suing the Marlins. Omeranz & Landsma Corporation submitted the bid. It was the only bid. A contract of some sort was subsequently drawn up. The Marlins then failed to honor the contract by not actually being sold for $10 million. So the corporation is suing for "damages". And also for "such other and further relief" as the court deems "just and proper". This is legal terminology for "we want money and goodies". I have a friend in law school so I can parse this stuff like nobody's business.

Obviously, Samson was not seriously offering the Marlins for a $10 million starting price. David Samson has his flaws, but "complete and utter incompetence" is not one of them. However, without having seen the alleged contract entered into after the Omeranz & Landsma bid, it's fun to let the imagination run wild and think that the Marlins might have gotten themselves into a pickle here. Since I don't actually know anything about law, I don't know how courts differentiate legitimate contracts from facetious contracts. Maybe they do, and maybe they don't. Maybe the Marlins inserted specific language, and maybe they didn't.

Omeranz & Landsma are not suing for ownership. They don't want to take over. You know what's really hard? Running an entire baseball franchise! But they're suing for something, and as weird as this looks from the outside, they could very well walk away with fuller pockets, either by ruling or by settlement. David Samson might have been joking, but something I've learned about rich white people is that they don't tell very good jokes, and now Samson might have to pay for one of his.

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Comments

Other franchises have stuff come up like “so-and-so star player isn’t happy with his contract” or “construction near their stadium is going to make it more difficult for ticket buyers to park”.

The Marlins… sigh…. the Marlins are a weekly giant facepalm. So just off the top of my head over the past few months….

1. LoMo gets #5 “un-retired”, causing a PR ruckus.
2. Management decides to hammer all pre-arb players to the new league minimum… regardless of service time, causing a clubhouse ruckus.
3. Cespedes spurns their paltry offer after supposedly being the front-runner. In fact, he signs with a club 3000 miles away.
4. We learn that the new homer monstrosity is actually real.
5. PETA gets upset about the aquarium. On the other hand, upsetting PETA is probably a good thing.
6. The new logos are not just panned, but epic-ly so.
7. Mike Cameron and Javy Vazquez decide that retirement is better than playing for the Marlins.
8. Somebody decides that making Hanley happy isn’t a priority; sign Reyes anyway, thus putting a crimp in the best FA signing they can muster in the off-season.
9. A row develops over the notion that the Marlins might have cheated the county out of enough parking garage revenue to even break even since somebody thought they could get away without paying property taxes on something used for private purposes.
10. And now…. this. Best possible outcome? The “sale” is upheld!!

"Sir Stealth, Stay stealth.. Your a moron" (jrod1142), 12/15/11 (the epic FWren Fortitude FanPost)

by carpengui on Feb 25, 2012 1:13 PM EST reply actions