Shocking Baseball Lawsuits: Wages, Sign-Stealing, and the Reserve Clause

The most consequential baseball lawsuits fall into a handful of buckets: fights over player pay and free agency, challenges to baseball’s century-old antitrust exemption, disputes over on-field cheating, and injury cases brought by fans and players. A few of them rewrote labor law inside the sport. Others failed but forced changes anyway. Together they explain how a game came to be shaped as much by courtrooms and arbitration hearings as by anything that happens between the lines.

The $185 Million Minor League Wage Settlement

For decades, most minor leaguers earned less than $10,000 a year while working 50 to 60 hour weeks, including unpaid stretches during spring training, extended spring training, and instructional leagues.¹ In 2014, three former players — Aaron Senne, Michael Liberto, and Oliver Odle — filed a federal class action in the Northern District of California alleging that Major League Baseball and its clubs violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and state wage laws in California, Arizona, and Florida.²

MLB fought for years, arguing that the work varied too much across locations for common legal questions to dominate. In October 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court denied MLB’s petition to decertify the class, letting the case proceed for thousands of current and former players.³ The league’s core defense treated minor leaguers as “seasonal workers” outside federal minimum wage protections, an argument the justices declined to endorse.⁴

Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero granted final approval to a $185 million settlement on March 29, 2023. About 24,000 players were eligible, with payments averaging $5,000 to $5,500 before taxes.¹

The legislative backdrop matters. In 2018, Congress passed the Save America’s Pastime Act as part of an omnibus spending bill, stripping minor leaguers of minimum wage protections and stipulating that they be paid for only 40 hours a week “irrespective of the number of hours the employee devotes to baseball-related activities.”³ Because the Senne case covered conduct before the act, the settlement was unaffected. Minor league players unionized in September 2022. In November 2024, Senator Dick Durbin introduced the Fair Ball Act, which would restore federal wage protections when no collective bargaining agreement is in place.⁵

Flood v. Kuhn and the End of the Reserve Clause

The most famous baseball lawsuit never produced a dollar in damages for the player who brought it. In 1969, St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies without his consent. He refused to report, writing to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn that he did not believe he should be treated as “a piece of property to be bought and sold.”⁶ He filed an antitrust suit challenging the reserve clause, the contractual provision that allowed a team to renew a player’s contract indefinitely.

The Supreme Court ruled 5–3 against Flood on June 19, 1972. Writing for the majority, Justice Harry Blackmun conceded that baseball operated as a business in interstate commerce and that the antitrust exemption was an “established aberration,” but upheld it anyway on stare decisis grounds, citing Federal Baseball Club v. National League (1922) and Toolson v. New York Yankees (1953).⁷ Any change, the Court said, was for Congress. Justice William Douglas dissented, calling the 1922 precedent a “derelict in the stream of law.”⁸

Flood lost. His playing career was effectively over. But the reserve system collapsed three years later anyway. In 1975, arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled in a grievance filed by pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally that the reserve clause bound a player only for one year beyond the contract term, not in perpetuity. The Eighth Circuit upheld the ruling and free agency was born. Congress eventually passed the Curt Flood Act in 1998, formally extending antitrust protections to major leaguers while preserving carve-outs for minor leagues, relocation, and broadcasting.⁶

The Gardella Case That Nearly Got There First

Flood was not the first player to swing at the reserve clause. In 1946, outfielder Danny Gardella and 21 other players were banned by Commissioner Happy Chandler for jumping to the Mexican League. Gardella sued for $300,000, alleging violations of the Sherman and Clayton acts. A district court dismissed the case under the 1922 Federal Baseball precedent, but in February 1949 the Second Circuit reversed 2–1 and sent it to trial. Judges Learned Hand and Jerome Frank pointed to radio and television broadcasting as evidence that baseball was plainly interstate commerce.⁹ Rather than risk a Supreme Court ruling that could have erased the exemption outright, MLB let the banned players back and quietly settled with Gardella for $60,000, about half of which went to legal fees.¹⁰

The 1980s Collusion Grievances

Free agency arrived in the mid-1970s. By the mid-1980s, owners had found a quieter way to hold salaries down. After the 1985 season, 29 of 33 free agents re-signed with their original teams. Kirk Gibson, Jack Morris, and Lance Parrish found essentially no outside offers.¹¹

The players’ union filed grievances covering three consecutive off-seasons: 1985–86, 1986–87, and 1987–88. Arbitrators Thomas Roberts and George Nicolau ruled against the owners in all three, finding the clubs had conspired to suppress the market. On October 26, 1990, the owners agreed to pay $280 million to settle the grievances, about $10.77 million per team. The final distribution to affected players was not completed until 2005.¹¹

The Astros Sign-Stealing Suits

When MLB confirmed in early 2020 that the Houston Astros had used a camera-and-trash-can system to steal signs during their 2017 championship season, fans, fantasy players, and even a former opposing pitcher sued. None succeeded.

A federal class action by DraftKings bettors argued the cheating had corrupted fantasy contests. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff dismissed it, ruling that sports fans “cannot claim ignorance regarding teams or players attempting to gain advantages by violating rules,” and citing Mayer v. Belichick from the NFL’s Spygate case.¹² Texas fans who sought season-ticket refunds were told by a state appeals court that a ticket is a “revocable license” for entry to a ballpark, and because they had been admitted, they got what they paid for.¹³

Former Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Mike Bolsinger filed his own suit, alleging that the Astros’ cheating during an August 2017 game, in which he gave up four earned runs while recording a single out, had ended his career. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge dismissed it in March 2021, finding California an improper venue since the witnesses lived in Texas, and adding that Bolsinger appeared to be leveraging local resentment left over from the Astros’ World Series win against the Dodgers.¹⁴ Across these cases, courts have refused to treat on-field rule-breaking as a basis for civil liability.

Foul Balls and the Fading Baseball Rule

For more than a century, the “baseball rule” shielded teams from liability when fans were struck by foul balls. Established as early as 1913, it held that spectators assumed the inherent risk of being hit and that teams satisfied their duty by providing a reasonable number of protected seats behind home plate and by warning ticketholders. Courts applied it “almost uniformly” for decades.¹⁵

The picture has shifted. Stadiums built since 1992 have placed fans more than 20 percent closer to home plate, and modern ball speeds sometimes give spectators less than half a second to react. An NBC News investigation counted at least 808 serious fan injuries between 2012 and 2019, and researchers estimated about 1,750 fans are injured by foul balls each year at MLB games. A 2018 death at Dodger Stadium, where a 79-year-old woman was struck and killed, intensified pressure for change.¹⁶

Courts began carving exceptions. Idaho’s supreme court refused to apply the rule when a fan was distracted in a concession area. An Ohio appeals court reached the same result when a spectator was distracted by a mascot. A California appeals court ruled in 2020 that operators must take reasonable measures to minimize risks rather than rely purely on assumption of risk.¹⁷

Commissioner Rob Manfred announced in December 2019 that all 30 MLB teams would expand protective netting for 2020. In 2022, MLB extended the mandate to minor league clubs, requiring foul pole to foul pole netting by the start of the 2025 season.¹⁶

That mandate came too late for Deborah Barbella. On May 2, 2025, the 57-year-old New Jersey woman was seated on the first-base side at Journey Bank Park at Historic Bowman Field in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. A foul ball struck her in the face during a collegiate game, causing a broken jaw, orbital floor and nasal fractures, a concussion, and eye injuries requiring surgery and a metal implant.¹⁸ She sued MLB, the Williamsport Crosscutters, and the City of Williamsport in Lycoming County Court in March 2026. The complaint alleges that temporary netting at the stadium was “unsafe, too short, full of gaps, dangerous and in violation of MLB standards,” and that all parties knew before the season started that the netting needed replacement. The case is pending.¹⁹

Darin Ruf’s Career-Ending Collision

Player-safety litigation now runs alongside the fan cases. On June 2, 2023, Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Darin Ruf chased a foul pop-up down the first-base line at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati and collided with an uncovered, unpadded metal tarp roller. His complaint describes the roller as having a sharp metal edge obscured by a “Gorilla Glue” advertisement cover, calling it a “dangerous and hidden condition.”²⁰ Ruf suffered what the suit calls “permanent and substantial deformities to his knee,” was placed on the 60-day injured list, and never played in the major leagues again.²¹

Ruf filed a negligence lawsuit against the Cincinnati Reds in Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas on May 22, 2025, seeking compensatory and punitive damages. He had been earning $3 million in 2023, and the suit includes claims for lost career earnings. Legal observers expect defenses including federal preemption under the Labor Management Relations Act, assumption of risk, and arguments that field conditions met industry standards.²²

Northwestern Baseball Retaliation Suit

In August 2023, three former members of Northwestern University’s baseball staff — assistant coaches Dusty Napoleon and Jon Strauss, and baseball operations director Chris Beacom — sued the university, former head coach Jim Foster, and several athletics officials in Cook County Circuit Court, alleging retaliation for reporting Foster’s conduct during the 2022–23 season.²³

The complaint described an environment of bullying and verbal abuse. It alleged Foster referred to a high-school-aged recruit as the “Chinese kid” and said he did not want a female team manager on the field because he did not want players “checking her out.”²⁴ The plaintiffs said they reported the behavior to administrators in October and November 2022 but were demoted to “remote special contract workers” and eventually not renewed. Foster was fired on July 13, 2023, three days after football coach Pat Fitzgerald was dismissed amid a separate hazing scandal.²⁵ Northwestern called the baseball suit “without merit” and said it had honored the staff’s full contracts.²³

Cooperstown Dreams Park v. a YouTuber

Not every notable baseball lawsuit involves labor or injury. In June 2025, Cooperstown Dreams Park, the youth complex in upstate New York, filed a trademark and copyright infringement suit in the Northern District of New York against the YouTube channel “Baseball Doesn’t Exist” and its owner, Joey Duffield. The target was a video titled “Cooperstown, Where 12 Year Olds Dreams Go To Die,” which the park said prominently featured its registered trademark and excerpts from its copyrighted videos.²⁶ Duffield moved to dismiss in October 2025. Proceedings are stayed while the court considers the motion.²⁷

1
ESPN. MLB Pays $185M To Settle Minor Leaguers Minimum Wage Lawsuit
2
Korein Tillery. Historic $185 Million Settlement in Minor League Baseball Wage and Hour Case Given Final Approval
3
ESPN. Supreme Court Denies MLB Request To Dismiss Lawsuit Seeking Increased Minor League Wages
4
CBS Sports. Supreme Court Clears Way for Class-Action Lawsuit From Minor League Players Being Paid Below Minimum Wage
5
U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Durbin Introduces Fair Ball Act To Shore Up Labor Protections for Minor League Baseball Players
6
Federal Judicial Center. Baseball’s Reserve Clause
7
Justia. Flood v. Kuhn, 407 U.S. 258
8
Oyez. Flood v. Kuhn
9
Baseball Hall of Fame. Gardella’s Lawsuit Pushed Baseball’s Labor Boundaries
10
SABR. Danny Gardella and the Reserve Clause
11
SABR. The Empire Strikes Out: Collusion in Baseball in the 1980s
12
ESPN. Judge Nixes Fantasy Players’ Lawsuit Over Sign-Stealing Scandal
13
Law Week Colorado. Texas Fans’ Case Against Sign-Stealing Astros for Ticket Refunds Fails
14
Bleacher Report. Mike Bolsinger’s Lawsuit Against Astros Over Sign-Stealing Scandal Dismissed
15
Indiana University. Foul Ball: Time To Abolish Baseball Rule Protecting Teams From Fan Injuries
16
NBC News. Every Major League Baseball Team Will Expand Netting To Protect Fans
17
NFHS. The Baseball Rule: Liability to Spectators for Foul Ball Injuries
18
Williamsport Sun-Gazette. Woman Injured by Foul Ball at Bowman Field Sues MLB, Crosscutters, City of Williamsport
19
Legal Newsline. Williamsport, MLB Sued Over Foul Ball to the Face
20
Sportico. Darin Ruf Cincinnati Reds Lawsuit
21
ESPN. Ex-Brewer Ruf Sues Reds Over Career-Ending Injury at Cincy Park
22
Forbes. Lawsuit by Former Milwaukee Brewer Ruf Is Latest in Line of Field Safety Cases
23
ESPN. Three Ex-Northwestern Baseball Staffers File Lawsuit
24
The New York Times / The Athletic. Northwestern Baseball Lawsuit Retaliation
25
News10. Northwestern Sued Again Over Troubled Athletics Program
26
Bloomberg Law. NY Baseball Complex Sues YouTuber Over Trademarks, Copyrights
27
PACER Monitor. Cooperstown Properties, LLC et al v. Duffield et al