Ex-Angels VP Tim Mead questioned by Skaggs lawyer about negligent supervision
Witness testimony began Wednesday with an accusation of negligent supervision in the high stakes trial against the Angels by the family of deceased pitcher Tyler Skaggs.
Tim Mead, an Angels employee of 40 years, was portrayed by the plaintiffs lawyer, Rusty Hardin, during four hours of direct examination as a well-meaning boss who repeatedly ignored company policy by failing to report the improper conduct of Eric Kay, the team communications director who gave Skaggs the fentanyl pills that killed him.
Hardin brought up a litany of instances where Kay likely violated Angels rules that could have resulted in discipline and even termination long before the July 2019 road trip to Texas during which Skaggs died in his hotel room after chopping up and snorting the illicit drugs provided by Kay.
Mead acknowledged that he knew of Kay’s years-long episodes of bizarre behavior, an extramarital affair with an intern, and problems with prescription medication, but that he never reported any of it to human resources.
Hardin asked if he was putting Kay ahead of the organization by doing everything he could to save him, allow him to regain his health and keep him employed.
Mead responded: “I guess I wasn’t consciously doing it at the time. … I was concerned about the organization, for him, his family and my staff.”
Hardin asked Mead if he was thinking of an obligation to organization or to Kay, and Mead replied, “A bit of both.”
Hardin: Did you recognize a conflict between those roles?
Mead: “Yes that entered my mind.”
Hardin asserted that it strains credulity that Mead asserted he knew nothing of Kay using or distributing illicit opioids when on the last day of the 2017 season Kay’s wife, Camela, reached out to Mead to infom him the family was conducting an intervention in their home that evening.
Mead and Tom Taylor, the Angels’ traveling secretary, visited the Kays the next morning, and Camela Kay testified during a deposition that the Kays directed him to Eric’s bedroom, where he had stashed 60 pills, stored in handfuls of 10 in small plastic bags.
Pressed by Hardin, Mead repeated that he couldn’t say he didn’t do what Camela Kay testified he did, but that he had no recollection of it. Mead insisted that he knew nothing of Eric Kay using or distributing illicit drugs to Skaggs or anyone else.
Cross-examination of Mead by Angels lawyers will take place Friday. The court is in recess every Thursday during what is expected to be a two-month trial.
Following Mead on the witness stand will be Taylor and team president John Carpino. More than 75 names are on the witness list, including current Angels star Mike Trout, former manager Mike Scioscia and several former players who testified in depositions that Kay or Skaggs gave them opioids.
Lawyers for the Angels and the family spoke to the jury for the first time Tuesday, delivering dramatically different opening statements.
Angels owner Arte Moreno sat in the front row along with Carpino, although neither one was present Wednesday. Skaggs’ widow, Carli, sat next to Tyler’s mother, Debbie Hetman. Tyler’s father, Darrell Skaggs, was absent because of poor health.
Representing Skaggs’ widow and parents are two lawyers with decades of experience representing high-profile and celebrity clients — Shawn Holley and Hardin.
Early in her career, Holley, 63, worked under Johnnie Cochran and was a member of the O.J. Simpson defense team in 1995. Since then, she has represented clients ranging from entertainment titans Michael Jackson, Tupac Shakur, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Lindsay Lohan, Snoop Dogg, Axl Rose and the Kardashian family to athletes such as Trevor Bauer, Mike Tyson, Lamar Odom, Reggie Bush and Sugar Ray Leonard.
Hardin, 83, represented the Arthur Andersen accounting firm during the Enron scandal more than 20 years ago. He also has won favorable verdicts for numerous athletes such as Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Warren Moon, Scottie Pippen, Calvin Murphy, Steve Francis, Rudy Tomjanovich and Rafer Alston.
The Angels are represented by Todd Theodora, chief executive of the nationally respected law firm Theodora Oringher. Theodora and the Angels have had a longstanding professional relationship.
Theodora served as lead trial counsel for the Angels in the suit brought by the city of Anaheim in 2005 when the team re-branded as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The city sought more than $300 million in damages against the Angels, who prevailed in a jury verdict.
Theodora wouldn’t comment on the Skaggs case because of the ongoing litigation, but after the Angels’ court victory regarding the name change, he described to The Times the all-consuming nature of a lengthy trial.
“You find yourself literally thinking about the case from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to bed and many times in the middle of the night as well,” Theodora said.
The stakes are high in the Skaggs trial. Holley delivered opening statements for the plaintiffs and said a fair estimation of Skaggs’ lost future earnings is $118 million. She added that the Angels must also compensate the family for “loss of companionship, solace, moral support and financial security.” And, Holley said, the family should be awarded punitive damages “not only because [the Angels] failed to keep Tyler safe, they put him in harm’s way.”
Taking a deliberate, soft-spoken approach, Holley walked the jury through a timeline of Kay’s drug use and eventual distribution of opioids. She said Angels team doctor Craig Milhouse wrote Kay numerous oxycodone prescriptions despite the fact he lacked any legitimate medical condition.
Holley attempted to establish that Kay’s drug use escalated year after year, saying there was “a complete failure by the Angels to grasp the magnitude of the problem.”
Holley said that Kay revealed his drug use in text messages and emails, and that a clubhouse attendant witnessed Kay snorting lines of drugs in a kitchen area outside the Angels clubhouse.
Citing evidence in Kay’s criminal trial — he is serving 22 years in prison for supplying Skaggs with fentanyl — Holley said Kay used his Angels email address to purchase illicit drugs on the website OfferUp.
By 2019, Kay’s drug usage had reached a point that he went through an outpatient treatment program that ended shortly before the Angels went on the road trip to Texas during which Skaggs died. Holley contended that human resources requires a “fitness for duty exam” before returning to work following a drug rehab stint.
“The Angels, again, did nothing,” she said. “So less than two months after learning Eric Kay had been dealing drugs to players, two months after Eric Kay overdoses and less than a month after outpatient rehab ended, the Angels decided to send Kay on the road trip. Within hours, Tyler Skaggs was dead.”
Theodora countered by saying the team “knows right from wrong,” and that it was Skaggs who engaged in “reckless choices that we teach our children and grandchildren not to do, for good reason.”
Theodora pointed out that in addition to the counterfeit fentanyl pill that Skaggs chopped up and snorted the July 2019 night he died in a Texas hotel room, he had a blood-alcohol level of .140 and a therapeutic level of oxycodone.
“The evidence will show he was not playing through pain, he was not prescribed these pills,” Theodora said. “It is downright shameless for anyone to say it was justified for someone to chop up and snort opioids, that they were just being used to get through a long season.”
Skaggs was involved in three crimes, Theodora said, “one, criminal possession; two, taking or ingesting illicit drugs; and three — as you’ll hear from five players — Tyler was distributing illicit pills to them.”
Opening statements and Mead’s testimony underscored the reasons a recent one-day settlement conference between the two sides went nowhere,
Skaggs was found dead in his hotel room in Southlake, Texas, on July 1, 2019, before the Angels were scheduled to start a series against the Texas Rangers. The Tarrant County medical examiner found that in addition to the opioids, Skaggs had a blood-alcohol level of 0.12. The autopsy determined he died from asphyxia after aspirating on his own vomit, and that his death was accidental.
Prosecutors alleged Kay sold opioids to Skaggs and at least five other professional baseball players from 2017 to 2019. Several players testified during the trial about obtaining illicit oxycodone pills from Kay.
The Skaggs family filed their lawsuit in June 2021, alleging the Angels knew, or should have known, that Kay was supplying drugs to Skaggs and other players. Testimony during Kay’s criminal trial established that Kay was also a longtime user of oxycodone and that the Angels knew it.
The Angels responded by saying that a former federal prosecutor the team hired to conduct an independent investigation into Skaggs’ death determined no team executives were aware or informed of any employee providing opioids to any player.
