The New York Yankees, MLB, ESPN and two announcers are facing a lawsuit from a fan that was caught by cameras sleeping on a Yankees game and shown on national TV.
Andrew Rector, 26 years old, is seeking up to $10 million in damages for the amount of teasing he got from social media for the alleged "avalanche of disparaging words" that turned into "defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress" for his sleeping video. In the copy of the legal document obtained by The Smoking Gun, Rector said that commentators Dan Shulman and John Kruk called him "stupor, fatty, unintelligent, stupid" while knowing and intending the same to be heard by millions all over the world as ESPN cameras focused on him sleeping.
The document, which is riddled with typographical errors, also further accuses website MLB.com of implying he is gay. It said: "Plaintiff alleges that juxtaposiitions of photos and text of two men kissing each other and the caption 'sleeping Yankee's(sic) Fan cares not for your rivalry talk' falsely implied that plaintiff engaged in that type of conduct described or portrayed by the picture."
An article on Yahoo! Sports notes that Rector's allegations seem to miss the point that most of the criticism he received happened on social media and the comments section, which is an area where things can expectedly spin out of control. The same report added that Kruk and Shulman did not actually say any of the things claimed to have been uttered and that Rector highlighting his case may only bring even more backlash online.
According to the New York Post, the audio playback of the incident showed that Kruk and Shulman had been surprised to find the fan sleeping during a 2-1 game, wondering how he had been doing so.
"Did he sleep through the Beltran homer? I mean 45,000 people stand up and cheer, and he sleeps through?" asked Shulman. To which, Kruk replied, "I think it would be tough to, but he seemed pretty comfortable. It didn't look like he just started to sleep."
While the commentators did poke some fun at his girth, saying "I didn't get a good look at him because of the head tilt, but I mean physically he could be, yeah," it didn't include any of the words stated in the lawsuit. Rector's lawyer, Valentine Okwara, said: "We'll settle this in court."
The named defendants have yet to comment on the incident.
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