A-Rod's the subject of another court battle
Yankees' Alex Rodriguez arrives at the offices of Major League Baseball to appeal his 211-game suspension. (Oct. 1, 2013) Credit: AP
Alex Rodriguez is preparing to return to the Yankees next season, but his legal problems are not quite over.
Rodriguez is being sued by one of his former lawyers for unpaid legal bills stemming from his battle to overturn Major League Baseball's suspension for his role in the Biogenesis scandal. At the pretrial hearing Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan, U.S. District Court Judge William H. Pauley III took a few jabs at the Yankees third baseman.
At the heart of Wednesday's hearing, which Rodriguez did not attend, was a jurisdictional dispute over whether the case should be heard in federal or state court.
"Where would A-Rod like to be sued?" a bemused Pauley asked Rodriguez's new lawyers.
Later, when it became clear the jurisdictional dispute was not going to be settled Wednesday, Pauley said: "I was just trying to be practical. But there isn't any common sense in anything that has to do with A-Rod."
Rodriguez filed two lawsuits against the league, commissioner Bud Selig and the Major League Baseball Players Association regarding their treatment of him last October, just as he and his lawyers were attending daily hearings before an arbitrator about the 211-game suspension MLB handed down in August, 2013. He dropped both of those lawsuits in February, a few weeks after an arbitrator reduced the suspension to the entire 2014 season.
Rodriguez sued Yankees team doctor Christopher Ahmad and New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center last October because he said they misdiagnosed his left hip injury in 2012. He dropped that lawsuit in June.
Rodriguez is being sued by the law firm of attorney David Cornwell for more than $380,000 in unpaid legal bills. Cornwell was part of Rodriguez's legal team in his battle with Major League Baseball.
But Rodriguez's current lawyer, Stephen Grafman, said Cornwell did little to aid Rodriguez.
"Were legal fees billed when they did not in fact do the work?" Grafman said in court.
The lawyer for Cornwell's firm, Peter Siachos of Gordon & Rees, said the firm expects to get paid for the work it did -- and he, too took a shot at A-Rod's troubles.
"Mr. Rodriguez can't play games on the baseball field, so now he's going to play games in court," Siachos told the judge.
The judge -- who referred to Rodriguez as "A-Rod" a total of five times in the 10-minute hearing -- set a next court date of Nov. 14 to discuss the jurisdictional issue. Rodriguez's lawyers would like the case tried in New York State court. The lawyers suing him want to keep it in federal court.
"That's the chicken liver we're going to chop" in the next hearing, Pauley said.
Rodriguez's suspension will end after the World Series. He is expected to rejoin the Yankees in February for spring training. Rodriguez, 39, has three years and $61 million left on his contract.
Anthony Rieber covers sports media and business and professional sports (you know, games and trades and things). He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since Jan. 1, 2026.
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