{"id":85695,"date":"2025-12-16T20:02:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T20:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/85695\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T20:02:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T20:02:13","slug":"jury-gets-tyler-skaggs-wrongful-death-case-against-the-angels-daily-breeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/85695\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury gets Tyler Skaggs wrongful-death case against the Angels \u2013 Daily Breeze"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deliberations in the Tyler Skaggs wrongful-death trial<\/a> against the Angels got underway on Tuesday morning, Dec. 16, with jurors now deciding whether the organization bears any responsibility for the death of the 27-year-old pitcher<\/a> six years ago in a Texas hotel room on a team road trip.<\/p>\n

Through testimony from more than 40 witnesses over two months, the jury heard often-unflattering portraits of Skaggs and Eric Kay<\/a>, the Angels communications staffer who provided the pitcher with a counterfeit pill \u2014 which turned out to contain fentanyl \u2014 that Skaggs crushed, snorted and apparently combined with oxycodone and alcohol prior to his death.<\/p>\n

Kay is serving time in federal prison for his role<\/a> in Skaggs\u2019 death. Now, the civil jury will decide whether the Angels should face a hefty monetary penalty as well.<\/p>\n

That decision will likely rest on whether the jurors believe the team knew, or should have known, that Kay was providing illicit opioid pills to Skaggs and other players.<\/p>\n

An Angels attorney, during closing arguments late Monday, Dec. 15, described Skaggs as a drug addict who took advantage of Kay\u2019s own addiction to get the staffer to take the risk in procuring drugs. Skaggs hid his drug addiction from the team, his own family and his agent, the attorney for the Angels argued, and was responsible for his own death.<\/p>\n

But attorneys for the Skaggs family countered during their closing arguments that the Angels ignored repeated signs of Kay\u2019s drug addiction and explicit warnings that Kay was providing the opioids to Skaggs and six other Angels players. Part of Kay\u2019s job was keeping players happy so they would take part in media interviews and promotional appearances, an attorney for the family argued, so Kay was essentially working on behalf of the organization in getting them illicit drugs in order to play through the pain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no doubt that if Eric Kay was taken out of that clubhouse, that if Eric Kay was not employed, that Tyler Skaggs would still be alive,\u201d Daniel Dutko, an attorney for the Skaggs family, told jurors early Tuesday during his final rebuttal argument.<\/p>\n

\"Attorney<\/p>\n

Attorney Daniel Dutko gives his closing arguments in the wrongful death lawsuit by the family of pitcher Tyler Skaggs against the Los Angeles Angels in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, CA on Monday, December 15, 2025. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Los<\/p>\n

Los Angeles Angels attorney Todd Theodora gives his closing arguments in the wrongful death lawsuit by the family of pitcher Tyler Skaggs against the Angels in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, CA on Monday, December 15, 2025. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Judge<\/p>\n

Judge H. Shaina Colover listens as Daniel Dutko gives his closing arguments in the wrongful death lawsuit by the family of pitcher Tyler Skaggs against the Los Angeles Angels in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, CA on Monday, December 15, 2025. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Carli<\/p>\n

Carli Skaggs, widow of pitcher Tyler Skaggs, is embraced by attorney William Haggerty before opening statements in the trial for the wrongful death lawsuit accusing the Los Angeles Angels baseball team of being responsible for the 2019 drug overdose death Skaggs Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025, in Santa Ana, Calif. (AP Photo\/Jae C. Hong, Pool)\n<\/p>\n

\"Attorneys<\/p>\n

Attorneys listen as judge H. Shaina Colover speaks before opening statements in the trial for the wrongful death lawsuit accusing the Los Angeles Angels baseball team of being responsible for the 2019 drug overdose death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025, in Santa Ana, Calif. (AP Photo\/Jae C. Hong, Pool)\n<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/p>\n

Former Angels employee Eric Kay, pictured in February, left, was sentenced to 22 years in prison Tuesday for providing Tyler Skaggs the drugs that led to the pitcher\u2019s overdose death. The 27-year-old Skaggs was found dead in July 2019 in a suburban Dallas hotel room. (AP Photo\/LM Otero)\n<\/p>\n

Show Caption<\/p>\n

1 of 6<\/p>\n

Attorney Daniel Dutko gives his closing arguments in the wrongful death lawsuit by the family of pitcher Tyler Skaggs against the Los Angeles Angels in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, CA on Monday, December 15, 2025. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

Expand<\/a><\/p>\n

Angel Attorneys noted that other players testified that Skaggs had introduced them to opioids and told them that Kay could get the pills. Kay purchased the illicit opioids from dealers he met online, exchanging messages with some of them on his work email account. Attorneys for the Skaggs family argued that Skaggs and the other players were using the pills every few days in order to deal with the rigors of a baseball season.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want you to believe Tyler Skaggs was a raging drug addict and a selfish person trying to get his coworkers addicted,\u201d Dutko, a Skaggs family lawyer, said of the Angels.<\/p>\n

The Skaggs\u2019 attorneys ended their closing arguments by showing video of Skaggs pitching at Angel Stadium, his teammates memorializing him after his death, and Skaggs growing up and spending time with his family and friends. The final images shown to jurors before they began deliberations was a photo of the glove Skaggs used growing up in Santa Monica next to a glove he used as a major league pitcher, and a simple text to Skaggs, sent after his death, in which his wife Carli wrote, \u201cI love you so much\u201d along with a heart emoji.<\/p>\n

Attorneys presented vastly different estimates as to how much Skaggs could have earned if not for his death: Lawyers for the Skaggs family suggested $101 million, while attorneys for the Angels countered with up to $32 million.<\/p>\n

Attorneys for the family didn\u2019t suggest a monetary figure to compensate for the Skaggs\u2019 family\u2019s loss of love and companionship, but suggested it should be more than the economic damages from a baseball contract.<\/p>\n

The jury verdict could open the door to punitive damages \u2014 an added amount meant to financially punish a defendant.<\/p>\n

So even a finding of partial responsibility by the Angels could potentially result in hefty financial damages by the team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deliberations in the Tyler Skaggs wrongful-death trial against the Angels got underway on Tuesday morning, Dec. 16, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[28358,46904,4535,1107,265,112,115,1335,202,204,203,199,201,200,278],"class_list":["post-85695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-hills","tag-california","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}