A couple of fans have sued MLB…and the individual teams…and the ticket reselling agencies over refund policies during the Covid-19 pandemic. It seems they are from New York, but the suit was filed in California. It always amazes me how lawyers shop for jurisdictions, but that’s beside the point here.
Apparently teams are not refunding tickets, treating the games thus far as postponements and not cancellations. MLB officials have indicated refund decisions will be made once final plans for the season have been made. The fans who filed suit, and are looking for others to join them, don’t feel they should have to wait.
Now, I’m not going to try to get into the legalities of the case, because I don’t know them. I will say that in the current climate, not refunding money to any ticket holder who requests it is pretty tone deaf. Many people are unexpectedly out of work. Many more have taken significant pay cuts, and money previously committed to the luxury of going to games is now needed for more important uses.
It’s a certainty already that there will not be a full 162 game schedule. It’s also very likely any games, at least before July at soonest, will be in empty venues. The current plan trying to be worked to have even a possibility of games before July at all calls for all of them to be in Arizona. To me, at minimum, the right thing to do is offer 50% refunds to any season ticket holder that asks for one. Now.
(Eventually, of course, refunds—prorated if a season does happen with games in front of live fans—will occur, along with option to apply the money to 2021 or whatever.)
Fan Interference 
Cue the lawyer jokes!
Two lawyers are walking down the street when a beautiful blonde jiggles by them in the other direction. One lawyers leans toward the other and whispers, “Boy, would I love to screw her.” The other lawyer replies “Out of what?”
Why are lawyers better to vivisect than lab rats? Because the interns don’t get attached to them.
What’s the difference between a dead lawyer and a dead skunk? No skid marks in front of the lawyer.
A lawyer falls off a cruise ship. The passengers frantically search for a life preserver while sharks swim around the lawyer. They finally get a line to him and pull him back on board. “Wow, you were lucky none of those sharks took a piece outta you,” says one of the crew. “Professional courtesy,” replies the lawyer.
A lawyer wakes up in the hospital after surgery and sees all the blinds are closed. He asks his nurse why. The nurse replies, “There’s a fire across the street and we didn’t want you to think the operation failed.”
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Remember, it’s only 99% of lawyers that give the rest a bad name.
Seriously though, if these fans are suing because they paid money for tickets and didn’t get to see professional baseball, why haven’t Feesh or Tiggers fans tried this tactic years ago?
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Um…I suspect it’s because the Feesh fans who bought season tickets weren’t expecting professional baseball in the first place.
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Old joke in Tampa was that it was fun in the fall watching professional football teams play the Buccaneers.
They were so bad as an expansion team that when a reporter asked their coach—John McKay—how he felt about their execution, he replied “I’m for it.”
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The running joke up here in hockey country is that the league is reluctant to give an NHL franchise to Hamilton because then Toronto will want one.
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I have MLB.TV and I better get a dang discount. I’m not paying for a whole season and not getting even 100 games. They can expand the post-season if they want to lengthen the season, but they don’t include those games in the regular season package. That doesn’t help me any. And this replaying the ’84 Series is not working for me, thanks.
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Same here.
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