Did not age well
The Astros have submitted their proposal for a Harris County judge to dismiss former Toronto Blue Jays reliever Mike Bolsinger’s lawsuit against the team.
Bolsinger has alleged trade misappropriation and sought more than $1 million in damages in the wake of Houston’s sign-stealing scandal in the 2017 season.
[…]
In the Astros’ 17-page motion to dismiss submitted on Tuesday night, the team pointed to Bolsinger’s misinterpretation of Texas’ trade secrets law and called Bolsinger’s lawsuit an attempt “to turn a headline-grabbing sports story into a cash recovery.”
According to the Astros’ motion, Bolsinger needed to prove ownership of the trade secrets, misappropriation of them and injury caused by the misappropriation to recover any damages under the state’s trade secrets law. The club claimed he did not.
The motion, submitted by Astros attorneys Hilary Preston and James L. Leader, challenged the notion that Toronto’s signs are even secrets at all.
“The signs are not trade secrets, and, to the extent that any party can “own” hand gestures meant to convey pitching strategy, the signs are owned by the Toronto Blue Jays, not (Bolsinger),” the Astros wrote in their motion.
“The signs are hand gestures made in front of thousands of spectators, and the mere fact that the Blue Jays attempted to conceal the meaning of those signs from the Astros’ hitters does not turn those gestures into trade secrets under Texas law.”
See here for the previous update. As noted, Bolsinger had sued in Los Angeles originally, but that suit was tossed on the grounds that California didn’t have jurisdiction, so he re-filed in Harris County. I don’t buy his argument and expect the suit to be dismissed, but we’ll see.