When Paul Lo Duca decided to share a story that put Joe West's reputation as an umpire at risk, he may have wanted to check his facts a little bit more carefully. Now, it's going to cost him.
West was awarded $500,000 in his defamation lawsuit against Lo Duca dating back to when the umpire sued the former catcher in October 2019. The reason? Lo Duca shared a story on an Action Network podcast — the network was initially part of the lawsuit, but was dismissed — in which he claimed that West accepted a bribe from Billy Wagner to expand his strike zone in exchange for some free rides in the closer's 1957 Chevy (via Bob Nightengale of USA Today). West also contended that Lo Duca falsely asserted that he had been ejected 15 times in his career, and "eight or nine of them" had come from West (via CaseText).
Here's the problem with those two claims, though, according to West's lawsuit: they're just not true. West was only the home-plate umpire for a game between the Phillies and Mets, the matchup noted in Lo Duca's story, one time during the span that Lo Duca and Wagner were teammates, and Wagner didn't even pitch in this matchup. As for the ejection aspect of the story, West was only responsible for one of Lo Duca's eight career ejections. In his complaint, West asserted that "Lo Duca knew the statements were false, or at a minimum, made with a reckless disregard for their truth or falsity" when he told the stories (via CaseText).
West also viewed his Hall of Fame candidacy as an important element in his decision to sue Lo Duca, saying that his damaged reputation from the false claims could hurt his chances at induction. Even if he was inducted, said "reputation management" expert Nicholas Carroll, the honor would not necessarily "quash all credence given by the public to Lo Doca's story." Alternatively, if he wasn't inducted but he won the lawsuit, there would still be a difference between West's post-retirement earnings due to that "tarnished" reputation changing into a "cleared" reputation. All of this resulted in a healthy sum of money awarded to West, in New York Supreme Court Justice John J. Kelley's ruling:
"Given the widespread dissemination of the defamatory statement at issue here, the nature of the statement, and the legitimate anxiety that the plaintiff suffered in connection with the possibility that he will not be elected to the Hall of Fame because of the statement, the court concludes that the plaintiff is entitled to an award of $250,000 for past mental anguish and emotional distress.
"...The court concludes that, based on both Carroll’s and Crowley’s testimony, an award in the sum of $250,000 is a reasonable sum to compensate the plaintiff for expenses he will need to incur in retaining a public relations firm to formulate and operationalize a sufficient reputation remediation plan."
However, the court declined to award West any money based on the speculation that this podcast story will hurt his Hall of Fame chances, seeing as Hall of Fame induction is just that: speculation.
Kelley also wrote that West intends to retire following the 2021 season, which would bring a career that started all the way back in 1976 to an end — with a half-million-dollar gift attached to it.
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