Major League Baseball released a response Thursday to a pending lawsuit by former minor league pitcher Neiman Nix, who said "tortious interference" from the league during its Biogenesis investigation irreparably harmed his anti-aging business.
MLB called the lawsuit "frivolous" in a release provided to Mike Vorkunov of Vice Sports:
The lawsuit filed today by Neiman Nix against MLB repeats many of the same allegations he asserted in a Florida lawsuit that was dismissed in 2014. Mr. Nix's new attorney, Vincent White, has in the past made outrageous claims about MLB. Mr. White's purported source for this lawsuit is a disgruntled former MLB employee who was terminated for cause. Mr. White has been threatening to file this lawsuit for months in an attempt to coerce MLB into paying his client. MLB considers the allegations in this lawsuit, including the allegations relating to the hacking of DNA Sport Lab's social media accounts, to be sanctionable under New York law. Other than noting that in Paragraph 40 of the Complaint Mr. Nix admits to selling products purportedly containing at least one banned performance-enhancing substance (IGF-1), MLB has no further comment on this frivolous lawsuit.
Nix filed a suit in 2014 making similar allegations, but it was ultimately thrown out of court. Vincent White, Nix's new attorney handling the case, said he has uncovered new information that reveals MLB acted in a "mob-like" manner.
"A detailed multiyear investigation has brought many items to light, including statements from former employees that have included the breaking of state and federal laws, invasion of privacy, computer hacking, extortion threats, and obstruction of justice," Nix said in a press release, per Craig Calcaterra of NBC Sports.
Biogenesis was a Miami-based anti-aging clinic linked to providing performance-enhancing drugs to numerous athletes, including Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun and Nelson Cruz. MLB launched an extensive investigation into the clinic, later suspending Rodriguez for a record 162 games. It suspended fourteen players overall.
As Vorkunov noted, MLB was accused of paying for documents, coercing witnesses and helping founder Tony Bosch in his court case. MLB later fired some of the lead investigators in the case. Ed Dominguez, one of the men fired, will testify on Nix's behalf, White said at a press conference Thursday:
He and other investigators to testify that Neil Boland initially headed the electronic investigations of the Department of Investigations. Then Neil Boland was tapped to work directly for commissioner Manfred. We expect Dominguez to testify that Boland set up a system for Major League Baseball by which they tracked player will-call tickets and analyzed the information of who was given tickets and cross-referenced it with persons of interest in their investigations. We believe that through this scheme is how they initially implicated Alex Rodriguez.
MLB has denied all allegations made by Nix and his attorneys throughout.
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