Rays, Sternberg call team partners’ latest lawsuit ‘baseless,’ ‘desperate’

A week after being sued a third time by five of his team’s minority owners, Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg is publicly pushing back, with the franchise calling the “relentless campaign” against him “baseless” and “desperate.”

In a rare statement on the suits released Friday, the team said the latest suit “contains numerous allegations that the plaintiffs know are false.” The suit, the team said, amounted to “attempted interference in the business operations of the team.”

The suit, filed June 27 in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court, accuses Sternberg of taking “fraudulent” control of the team by “wrongfully and surreptitiously” transferring legal ownership to a company he owns without the knowledge of five minority partners, who collectively own less than 10% of the team. It followed similar suits in May 2021 and this February that alleged Sternberg was squeezing his partners out of profits and withholding documents key to a review of the team’s finances.

“These intentionally false claims are designed to harm the Rays organization at a time when we are actively engaged in efforts to build a new ballpark in Tampa Bay,” the statement read. “The allegation that a simple and commonplace corporate reorganization stripped the limited partners of the value of their investments and their rights and protections is patently false, and the limited partners know that.”

The team said the ownership restructuring was approved by the team’s lenders and Major League Baseball and did not affect the five minority partners’ stakes or ownership rights.

“It is unfortunate that these plaintiffs have resorted to an improper litigation campaign that needlessly wastes the resources of the local court system,” the team stated. “This is a clear abuse of the judicial process. We intend to take all appropriate steps and seek all remedies and sanctions available to hold these limited partners accountable for their actions, including their attempted interference in the business operations of the team.”

The statement represents the team’s most extensive comments on the legal battle since over a year ago, when it called the minority owners’ original lawsuit “deceptive and inflammatory” and “fraught with error and falsehood.”

The team’s public statement was not part of any court filing. In a July 5 filing accepting the lawsuit, the team’s attorneys said they would file an official response within 60 days.

In March, a Pinellas-Pasco judge ruled that most of the initial lawsuit against Sternberg must be settled through arbitration — but one count, which seeks to remove him as a general partner, can proceed in court. The next hearing on that case is scheduled for September.

The Rays called the partners’ latest lawsuit “a desperate attempt to avoid arbitration.”

“The plaintiffs prefer to publicly air their meritless allegations rather than seriously pursue their claims,” the statement read.

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In a statement, an attorney representing the minority owners — Robert Kleinert, Gary Markel, the MacDougald Family Limited Partnership, Stephen M. Waters and a trust in Waters’ name — called the Rays’ statement “a public character assassination.”

“Our clients stand by their claims and have certainly never made any allegations they know to be false,” said Courtney Fernald, managing partner of St. Petersburg’s Englander Fischer. “We are comfortable letting the court system do its job without feeling a need to litigate through the media.”