SANTA ANA (CNS) – Testimony is set to begin Wednesday in the trial of the wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the widow and parents of the late Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs, who succumbed to a drug overdose in a Texas hotel on a road trip six years ago.
The first witness is scheduled to be Angels vice president of communications Tim Mead followed by traveling secretary Tom Taylor.
The plaintiffs are seeking $118 million in future earnings damages, plus punitive damages. Their attorney Shawn Holley said Tuesday in her opening statement of the trial that the 27-year-old pitcher “died alone in his hotel room” on July 1, 2019, during a road trip to play the Texas Rangers, because the team allowed Eric Kay to remain employed in the public relations department despite behavior “in violation of their own policies” for “dealing drugs to other players” and that team officials “did nothing about it.”
Holley said team executives “buried their heads over and over and over again,” ignoring Kay’s issues.
Kay has been convicted of providing a fatal dose of fentanyl causing death in federal court in Texas and is serving a 22-year prison term.
Skaggs, the only child of Debbie Hetman and Darrell Skaggs, grew up around sports. His mother coached at Santa Monica High School, where Skaggs got the attention of major league scouts and was drafted in the first round by the Angels, Holley said. His parents divorced when he was 4 years old, but they were “loving and supporting” of him, she added.
Holley said that even in elementary school Skaggs earned a reputation for “stepping up for” classmates without friends, or who were bullied or disabled.
“He was kind to everyone,” she said. “He treated everyone the same – – with respect and kindness.”
Skaggs also took time to sign autographs for fans and was popular in the clubhouse, Holley said. Skaggs and his wife were together for five years and had been married for seven months when he died, Holley said, adding that the two were planning to start a family.
Holley detailed multiple instances of how Kay, who worked his way up from an intern in 1996 to a key job as a media liaison for players, would show up to work “obviously high” on opioids. One time he took a 90 mph pitch off his leg “for money,” and another time was so high he was dancing around with his shirt off, she said.
Holley said a team doctor had been prescribing Kay “powerful opioids” for no medically necessary reason. At one point Kay was taking five pills a day, she said.
Kay “engaged in this horseplay to ingratiate himself to the players,” she said.
Kay was also expected to make the players happy. That included getting restaurant reservations, tickets, tee times and drugs, Holley said.
On one road trip in 2013 against the Yankees, Kay was having an issue “swaying and crying” and had “fear in his eyes,” so team traveling secretary Taylor put him on a bus back to his hotel, Holley said.
Kay told Taylor and Angels vice president of communications, Tim Mead, that he had a serious drug problem and was addicted to Vicodin, Holley said.
“He begged Tim Mead and Tom Taylor for help,” the lawyers added. But Kay was never disciplined and there were no consequences, Holley said.
Kay “openly” discussed his drug abuse in emails from the team’s server, she said.
In 2015, Kay discussed going to a private drug rehab with the help of the team doctor “on the hush hush,” Holley said.
That was a “complete failure,” she said.
He relapsed in 2016, Holley said.
Kay was seen “snorting lines of drugs” in a team stadium kitchen moments before team owner Arte Moreno walked in, Holley said. Moreno was in the audience for Tuesday’s opening statements.
In 2017, Kay’s drug abuse was `’so out of control his family staged an intervention, which backfired when Kay angrily denied having a problem, Holley said.
The next day, Mead and Taylor allegedly attempted to convince Kay to check into a drug rehabilitation facility and demanded to know where his drug stash was. He allegedly showed them where he hid in his home multiple baggies of the pills stuffed in shoe boxes and elsewhere.
That sort of packaging indicates drug dealing, Holley alleged.
Kay faced no consequences and continued selling narcotic painkillers to several players in the team parking lot and elsewhere, Holley said. The players were not excessively using the drugs, just taking enough to deal with pain, she added.
Holley noted how one cleaning woman for the team was “fired on the spot” for drinking a “hard seltzer” on a lunch break and two groundskeepers were suspended for attempting to smoke marijuana on a lunch break.
“But they took no action for their guy,” she said.
By January 2019, Kay’s drug abuse was “so flagrant,” human relations officials advised him to see an addictions specialist, Holley said.
In March of that year, Kay was using the team’s email account to find distributors for oxycodone, Holley said.
That same year he showed up to work one day so high that he was vomiting, sweating and “dancing around without his shirt on,” Holley said. Taylor took him home and Kay’s wife allegedly showed Taylor that he had a bottle of Advil filled with oxycodone.
“She begged the Angels to do something,” Holley said.
Kay was taken to a hospital where doctors found “so many drugs in his system they thought he was suicidal,” Holley said. Kay was allegedly allowed to do outpatient therapy for a couple of days a week and was back to work in five weeks.
Angels attorney Todd Theodora told jurors that Skaggs “was a beloved member of the Angels family… He died due to his reckless decisions to mix (alcohol with drugs)… He did that to get high. Angels Baseball did not kill Tyler Skaggs. Angels Baseball wishes he came forward and told us about his struggles and the team could have helped him.”
Angels officials turned Kay in to authorities when they learned July 18, 2019, that Kay had told his co-worker and supervisors about seeing Skaggs the night he died snorting drugs in his motel room, Theodora said.
Before that Angels officials had never “heard anything remotely similar to this,” Theodora said.
If team officials knew the two were friends and doing drugs they would have put Kay on leave before suspending and firing him, Theodora said.
“The reason Eric Kay was tried and convicted was because Angels Baseball turned him in,” Theodora said.
Skaggs had acceptable therapeutic levels of oxycodone and fentanyl in his system when he died, Theodora said. But he also had a blood-alcohol level of .14, nearly twice the legal limit for driving in California, Theodora said.
According to a defense expert that amounts to 11 to 14 drinks, and when mixed with the depressant drugs it can be deadly, Theodora said. The fentanyl pill Skaggs ingested was a “counterfeit,” meaning it was made in China and Mexico by drug dealers who were not pharmacists or medical experts, the defense attorney said.
Skaggs was warned by his agent to not take the counterfeit pills because they can have deadly levels of fentanyl in them, Theodora said.
Skaggs’ laptop had signs of being used to crush up pills with a hotel card key, and authorities also found a “snorting straw” in his room, Theodora said. Snorting the drugs can provide a faster and more intense high, he explained.
If Skaggs had swallowed the pills instead he would have woken up the next morning, Theodora said.
“Tyler Skaggs was playing Russian Roulette with his life that night,” Theodora said. “Tyler was a drug addict, but he concealed it from his teammates… We wish he had told us… We could have helped him.”
Skaggs shared pills with teammates Cam Bedrosian, C.J. Cron, Blake Parker, Mike Morin and Matt Harvey, but it was a “small circle,” and they hid it from the rest of the team, Theodora said. Parker and Bedrosian only did it a couple of times and quit, according to Theodora.
Skaggs had been using unprescribed drugs going back to 2011, before he joined the team in 2013, Theodora said.
Theodora denied that Kay was a “pill pusher” for the team. Kay struggled with bipolar disorder and Theodora made the case that some of his bizarre behavior was owed to that and issues with his prescription medication for it. The April 2019 incident was due to a combination of over-the-counter medication for a head cold with his bipolar medicine, Theodora said.
Kay’s and Skaggs’ recreational drug use was “on their own time,” Theodora said.
Theodora also said the team had legal requirements to aid Kay with his mental health disorder.
The defense attorney said Kay was being drug tested at a Kaiser Permanente facility and that he was in a “protected class” due to his mental health disability. Kay took part in a six-week outpatient program and when he emerged he was a new man, Theodora said.
“The team thought he had beaten these issues,” he said. “The team was reassured… He was a new man. He had a spring in his step.”
Kay was hoping to succeed Mead, who had taken over as head of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Theodora said.
Angels star outfielder Mike Trout is expected to testify on Oct. 21.
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