Trevor Bauer’s Legal Blitz Of Defamation Claims Has So Far Yielded Zero Victories

In the end, Roger Clemens’ years-long legal war with his former trainer Brian McNamee ended in quiet fashion inside a Brooklyn federal courthouse.

McNamee, the longtime personal trainer guru-turned-chief accuser of Clemens, received an undisclosed settlement in March 2015 to resolve the defamation lawsuit he had filed against the seven-time Cy Young Award winner. It was Clemens’ insurance company, AIG, who ultimately paid McNamee.

By that time, Clemens had already spent millions on legal bills, but emerged from his federal perjury and obstruction of Congress trial unscathed — acquitted on all counts in 2012. As for Clemens’ own defamation suit against McNamee, that lawsuit was dismissed by a federal appeals court in 2010. Clemens had taken legal action after McNamee testified before a congressional committee and to former Sen. George Mitchell that Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs during his major league career.

New York Daily NewsRoger Clemens pays Brian McNamee to settle defamation suit, putting end to seven-year war

Former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer, who is currently without a major league employer, went on the legal offensive last year in similar fashion to Clemens, only Bauer filed multiple defamation suits — against a female accuser and her former attorney, and against two media outlets.

So far Bauer, 32, hasn’t fared much better than Clemens, proving how difficult it can be to win a defamation claim.

On March 1, U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty of the Southern District of New York dismissed, with prejudice, Bauer’s lawsuit against G/O Media — the parent company of Deadspin — and Chris Baud, a managing editor at the outlet.

Bauer filed the suit after the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office declined to pursue criminal charges against the pitcher in February last year. The D.A.’s office had reviewed a Pasadena Police Department investigation of Bauer that stemmed from a San Diego woman’s claims that Bauer sexually assaulted her on two occasions in 2021 at his Pasadena home.

Bauer alleged he was defamed by Deadspin in a 2021 story that said the San Diego woman suffered a skull fracture as a result of her encounter with Bauer. The woman had filed a request for a temporary restraining order against Bauer in Los Angeles Superior Court in June 2021, and attached to the request was a declaration which contained the woman’s sexual assault allegations.

The woman later sought a permanent restraining order against Bauer, but after a four-day hearing on the matter in August 2021, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge said the woman’s initial declaration was “materially misleading.” The same judge denied the permanent restraining order and dissolved the temporary restraining order.

“The online publication Deadspin, owned by G/O Media, Inc., capitalized on a false accusation against Trevor Bauer by a woman to continue an unrelenting attack on Mr. Bauer with the purpose of humiliating him and ruining his baseball career,” read Bauer’s original complaint. “Deadspin persisted in publishing defamatory falsehoods even after other publications, including Deadspin’s own source, corrected their coverage.”

Deadspin’s source was The Athletic, which Bauer also sued for defamation last year. Journalist Molly Knight is a defendant in that suit as well.

Judge Crotty wrote in his March 1 opinion that under New York law, “a defamation plaintiff must establish five elements,” including “a written defamatory statement of and concerning the plaintiff,” and “falsity of the defamatory statement.” Crotty wrote that there were three Deadspin “statements” in particular that formed the basis of Bauer’s complaint, but that ultimately he did not meet the burden of proof.

“Even if there were any actionable falsity to the challenged statements, they would still not amount to defamation because they are a substantially accurate summation of the judicial proceedings surrounding the petition and are therefore privileged statements,” Crotty wrote in his opinion. Since the lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, that means Bauer can’t refile charges at a later date.

While Bauer’s defamation lawsuit against the San Diego woman is still open, a California federal judge dismissed Bauer’s claim against one of the woman’s former attorneys, Fred Thiagarajah, last fall. Bauer alleged in that complaint that the woman “wanted to destroy Mr. Bauer’s reputation and baseball career, garner attention for herself, and extract millions of dollars from Mr. Bauer,” and that Thiagarajah “aided in those efforts.” The woman has countersued Bauer.

Meanwhile, Bauer’s lawsuit against The Athletic and Knight is still active. The presiding federal judge in that case, Michael Fitzgerald of the Central District of California, dismissed Bauer’s defamation claim based on the Athletic story published June 30, 2021, according to court documents. Bauer amended his complaint, and according to a New York Times spokeswoman (the Times owns The Athletic), the defendants will move to dismiss the revised claim.

Fitzgerald denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss Bauer’s defamation suit based upon several of Knight’s tweets, and the spokeswoman said the defendants have appealed Fitzgerald’s ruling to the Ninth Circuit.

Although Bauer didn’t face any criminal charges and was never arrested in connection with the sexual assault claims, he was disciplined by baseball commissioner Rob Manfred for violating the Joint Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Policy. Manfred gave Bauer a historic 324-game suspension without pay, but the pitcher appealed and an independent arbitrator reduced the punishment to 194 games.

Bauer still must serve 50 games of the 2023 season, but will be eligible to play in late May, although there have been no MLB clubs who have come forward to sign him after his Dodgers’ release earlier this year.

A Bauer representative said the pitcher declined comment on the dismissal of the defamation claim against G/O Media.

But after that suit was tossed, Deadspin published its own story outlining the judge’s ruling. The story concluded with the statement: “We at Deadspin are heartened by the decision and remain committed to reporting on and exposing violence against women by athletes, no matter how famous.”