A tentative settlement was announced in the Tyler Skaggs wrongful-death trial against the Angels on Friday morning, Dec. 19 — abruptly ending jury deliberations in the civil case that has grabbed national headlines.
The details of the settlement have not been divulged.
But jurors, based on the notes they had sent the judge during several days of deliberations, appeared to indicate they had been strongly considering potentially costly financial penalties against the ball club.
Late morning, lawyers for the Angels and the Skaggs family hustled in and out of the courtroom, huddling with one another for hushed conversations in the hallway and apparently meeting in another room away from the public, apparently working to finalize a deal.
As Orange County Superior Court Judge H. Shaina Colover took the stand, Skaggs’ wife, Carli, embraced her attorneys.
“The parties have reached a settlement,” the judge said, just before calling in the jurors to release them.
The settlement comes six years after Skaggs was found dead in a Texas hotel room at the start of a team road trip — and three years after Angels communications staffer Eric Kay was sentenced to decades in prison for his role in the pitcher’s death. The two-month trial had 40-plus witnesses.
Kay had provided illicit opioids to Skaggs and other Angels players. Skaggs, shortly before his death, crushed and snorted a counterfeit opioid pill that Kay had given him that turned out to contain fentanyl, which he combined with oxycodone and alcohol.
Testimony in the trial painted complicated portraits of Skaggs and Kay.
Both were well liked, Skaggs among his fellow players and Angels support staff, Kay with his coworkers in the Angels front office. But both had histories of opioid use and addiction, setting in motion a drug connection that led one to a death and the other to a prison cell.
The Angels, when trading for Skaggs in late 2013, were apparently unaware that he had battled a Percocet addiction while playing for the Arizona Diamondbacks. During his time with the Angels, Skaggs apparently introduced a half-dozen fellow players to opioids and informed them that Kay could get ahold of pills.
Kay bought the illicit drugs from dealers he met online, some who he messaged through his Angel email account.
Angel attorneys alleged that Skaggs and the other players took advantage of Kay and his addiction, pressuring Kay into taking the risk of buying the illicit pills. Skaggs kept his drug use during his tenure with the Angels secret, not only from the ball club but also from his own family and agent, team attorneys noted.
But attorneys for the Skaggs family argued that because part of Kay’s job was making sure players were happy — so they would do media interviews and promotional appearances — he was effectively acting on behalf of the team when he provided drugs to the players. And the family attorneys said that the Angels ignored numerous red flags about Kay dating as far back as 2013.
Kay acted erratically at times, incidents his coworkers attributed to Kay’s mental-health struggles and what they said they believed to be related prescription drugs. He once had what his coworkers believed to be a panic attack in the press box at Yankee Stadium, was the subject of a intervention by his family in 2017 and overdosed at Angel Stadium on Easter 2019, leading to hospitalization and a rehab stint that ended shortly before Skaggs’ death.
Those who worked with Kay in the Angel front office said they were unaware that he was providing players with opioids. But some players and lower-level workers in the team clubhouse testified that Kay’s drug issues were well known within the organization. And Kay’s ex-wife — as well as Kay himself in an interview with police — said that Angel officials were informed that Kay was providing Skaggs with drugs prior to his death.
Other players who admitted to taking opioids provided by Kay — Cam Bedrosian, C.J. Cron, Matt Harvey, Blake Parker and Mike Morin — described using the pills to stay on the field and weather the wear and tear of the lengthy baseball seasons.
Jurors had wide latitude to determine potential financial damages.
Attorneys for the Skaggs family estimated that the pitcher could have earned more than $100 million, while those with the Angels said his earnings would have topped off at $32 million. The family attorneys didn’t put a price tag on the Skagg’s family’s loss of love and companionship but suggested that it was higher than the economic damage related to a baseball contract.
Among the notes sent by the jury to the judge was one late Wednesday, Dec. 17 — before the panel took Thursday off — indicated it was also considering punitive damages.
Those damages would have gone beyond the losses of the Skaggs family to punish the Angels for their conduct and deter them from doing a similar thing again. Which is why, in many civil trials, such punitive damages can go far beyond those tied to compensating plaintiffs.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.