Another Trevor Bauer defamation suit is thrown out
Former Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer failed in another of his defamation suits Wednesday, when a New York judge dismissed a lawsuit he filed against the website dead spin and its editor-in-chief.
Of the six defamation suits Bauer filed, three have been dismissed. Only one has survived a challenge to fire, and lawyers for that defendant – baseball writer Molly Knight — requested an appeals court to intervene.
In 2021, Bauer was charged with sexual assault by a San Diego woman, but her request for a restraining order was denied and Bauer was not charged with a crime.
After an investigation that also considered the accounts of two other women, Major League Baseball suspended Bauer for violating its sexual assault and domestic violence policies.
The Dodgers released Bauer in January, but remain liable for his $22.5 million salary this year. He remains a free agent.
In the Deadspin suit, Bauer claimed he had been slandered by initial reports that the woman’s skull had been fractured during a sexual encounter.
According to medical records filed as part of the woman’s request for a restraining order, a doctor had observed symptoms consistent with a skull fracture. A CT scan ruled out a fracture and the medical report included a diagnosis of “acute head injury”.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty said Bauer incorrectly suggested the woman’s possible skull fracture was “self-reported.”
“These symptoms were not merely ‘self-reported,’ but based on a physician’s initial examination and observation,” Crotty wrote.
Crotty also said the Deadspin report did not substantially misrepresent the claims made by the woman in her request for a restraining order — that is, she claimed she had committed sexual assault that left her with serious injuries.
“Whether those injuries were a skull fracture or simply ‘significant head and facial trauma’ and bruising does not change the nature of the allegations,” Crotty wrote, “nor would it have any other effect on the reader’s mind. “