Major League Baseball filed a response to Frank McCourt’s motion from yesterday, claiming that McCourt is engaging in “harassment” and that his claims for various documents related to how Major League Baseball treated other teams with liquidity issues as irrelevant and frivolous.
Overall, the league is clearly trying to keep Frank McCourt’s financial irresponsibility as the central issue in this case, reiterating how the Dodgers’ problems are all of his doing. And they offered a new little tidbit: that even though the Dodgers’ financial crunch was readily apparent by early this year, McCourt tried to take another $20 million out of the team. Which wouldn’t shock me a bit, actually, because that’s just how Frank rolls.
I would expect this kind of back and forth to continue between now and July 20th, when the next hearing is scheduled. I would also expect that, by then, we’ll know the cut of the judge’s jib too.
If he indulges McCourt’s apparently massive discovery requests, we’ll likely have an ugly and protracted bit of litigation on our hands, because McCourt and his lawyers could likely find all kinds of ways to gum this up into a document-intensive case if given the latitude. If, on the other hand, he smacks McCourt’s motion down, it will be a sign that he’s not too crazy about his claims of unfair and disparate treatment by Bud Selig, which could bode ill for McCourt’s future as the Dodgers’ owner.