Ex-Angels VP Tim Mead questioned by Skaggs lawyer

Witness testimony started Wednesday with an accusation of negligent supervision in the high stakes trial against the Angels by the household of deceased pitcher Tyler Skaggs.

Tim Mead, an Angels worker of 40 years, was portrayed by the plaintiffs lawyer, Rusty Hardin, during 4 hours of direct examination as a well-meaning boss who repeatedly ignored company coverage by failing to report the improper conduct of Eric Kay, the staff communications director who gave Skaggs the fentanyl drugs that killed him.

Hardin introduced up a litany of cases where Kay seemingly violated Angels guidelines that may have resulted in self-discipline and even termination long before the July 2019 street journey to Texas during which Skaggs died in his resort room after chopping up and snorting the illicit medication offered by Kay.

Mead acknowledged that he knew of Kay’s years-long episodes of weird habits, an extramarital affair with an intern, and issues with prescription medication, but that he never reported any of it to human assets.

Hardin requested if he was placing Kay forward of the group by doing every little thing he may to save him, enable 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 requested Mead if he was considering of an obligation to group or to Kay, and Mead replied, “A bit of both.”

Hardin: Did you acknowledge a battle between those roles?

Mead: “Yes that entered my mind.”

Hardin asserted that it strains credulity that Mead asserted he knew nothing of Kay utilizing or distributing illicit opioids when on the last day of the 2017 season Kay’s spouse, Camela, reached out to Mead to infom him the household was conducting an intervention in their home that night.

Mead and Tom Taylor, the Angels’ touring secretary, visited the Kays the next morning, and Camela Kay testified during a deposition that the Kays directed him to Eric’s bed room, where he had stashed 60 drugs, saved in handfuls of 10 in small plastic baggage.

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 utilizing or distributing illicit medication to Skaggs or anybody else.

Cross-examination of Mead by Angels legal professionals will happen Friday. The court is in recess every Thursday during what is predicted to be a two-month trial.

Following Mead on the witness stand might be Taylor and staff president John Carpino. More than 75 names are on the witness checklist, including current Angels star Mike Trout, former supervisor Mike Scioscia and a number of former gamers who testified in depositions that Kay or Skaggs gave them opioids.

Lawyers for the Angels and the household spoke to the jury for the first time Tuesday, delivering dramatically different opening statements.

Angels proprietor Arte Moreno sat in the entrance row along with Carpino, although neither one was current Wednesday. Skaggs’ widow, Carli, sat next to Tyler’s mom, Debbie Hetman. Tyler’s father, Darrell Skaggs, was absent because of poor health.

Representing Skaggs’ widow and dad and mom are two legal professionals with a long time of expertise representing high-profile and celeb shoppers — Shawn Holley and Hardin.

Early in her profession, Holley, 63, labored under Johnnie Cochran and was a member of the O.J. Simpson protection staff in 1995. Since then, she has represented shoppers ranging from leisure titans Michael Jackson, Tupac Shakur, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Lindsay Lohan, Snoop Dogg, Axl Rose and the Kardashian household 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 in the past. He also has received favorable verdicts for quite a few 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 government of the nationally revered law firm Theodora Oringher. Theodora and the Angels have had a longstanding skilled relationship.

Theodora served as lead trial counsel for the Angels in the swimsuit introduced by town of Anaheim in 2005 when the staff re-branded as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The metropolis sought more than $300 million in damages against the Angels, who prevailed in a jury verdict.

Theodora wouldn’t remark on the Skaggs case because of the continuing litigation, but after the Angels’ court victory relating to the title change, he described to The Times the all-consuming nature of a prolonged 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 honest estimation of Skaggs’ misplaced future earnings is $118 million. She added that the Angels must also compensate the household for “loss of companionship, solace, moral support and financial security.” And, Holley said, the household ought to 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 method, Holley walked the jury through a timeline of Kay’s drug use and eventual distribution of opioids. She said Angels staff doctor Craig Milhouse wrote Kay quite a few oxycodone prescriptions despite the fact he lacked any official medical condition.

Holley tried to set up that Kay’s drug use escalated 12 months after 12 months, 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 textual content messages and emails, and that a clubhouse attendant witnessed Kay snorting strains of medication in a kitchen space outdoors the Angels clubhouse.

Citing evidence in Kay’s prison trial — he’s serving 22 years in prison for supplying Skaggs with fentanyl — Holley said Kay used his Angels electronic mail deal with to buy illicit medication on the web site OfferUp.

By 2019, Kay’s drug usage had reached a level that he went through an outpatient treatment program that ended shortly before the Angels went on the street journey to Texas during which Skaggs died. Holley contended that human assets 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 staff “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 identified that in addition to the counterfeit fentanyl tablet that Skaggs chopped up and snorted the July 2019 night time he died in a Texas resort room, he had a blood-alcohol degree of .140 and a therapeutic degree 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 concerned 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 explanations a current one-day settlement convention between the 2 sides went nowhere,

Skaggs was discovered useless in his resort room in Southlake, Texas, on July 1, 2019, before the Angels have been scheduled to start a collection against the Texas Rangers. The Tarrant County medical examiner discovered that in addition to the opioids, Skaggs had a blood-alcohol degree of 0.12. The post-mortem decided he died from asphyxia after aspirating on his own vomit, and that his death was unintended.

Prosecutors alleged Kay bought opioids to Skaggs and at least 5 other skilled baseball gamers from 2017 to 2019. Several gamers testified during the trial about acquiring illicit oxycodone drugs from Kay.

The Skaggs household filed their lawsuit in June 2021, alleging the Angels knew, or ought to have recognized, that Kay was supplying medication to Skaggs and other gamers. Testimony during Kay’s prison trial established that Kay was also a longtime person of oxycodone and that the Angels knew it.

The Angels responded by saying that a former federal prosecutor the staff employed to conduct an impartial investigation into Skaggs’ death decided no staff executives have been conscious or informed of any worker offering opioids to any participant.