The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Charles Big Angry Adams Thinks Bolsinger Lawsuit May Have Substance

Episode Date: February 11, 2020

The Big Angry Lawyer, Charles Adams, of KPRC 950 AM joins Matt and Ross to discuss whether or not Mike Bolsinger's lawsuit holds water

This is Craig Ackerman. And the Rockets get the job done. Oh, here's another new catchphrase I have for you. Good gracious. Good gracious! You're listening to the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790. Big Angry, we have named you the official legal analyst of the Matt Thomas show, whether you like it or not. Let's turn this microphone on.

Charles Adams, KPRC, you're the most marketable things that 950's got going. You work your ass off. I'm the best thing on 950. There's no doubt. The ratings reflect that. It is. Tell the people when your show is on regular. It is on regularly. It's 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. Monday through Friday. So you double dip?

I do. Typically, I play the same show because they don't want to give me an 11 p.m. board off. Okay. That's behind the scenes. I'm pulling the curtain back. You do. We do pull the curtain back. That's what we do on this show all the time. Big Angry, we don't know a lot of things about legal. That's when you went to law school. That's why you're one of the most successful attorneys in the Houston area when you are recognized as much by everybody that we know. There is a has-been pitcher. I mean, actually, well, maybe never was. A journeyman.

You're being polite. This is a guy named Mike Bollinger, yeah, B-O-L-S-I-N-G-E-R. He is suing in a California court for multiple millions of dollars for A, himself, and B-4 charities because he believes the performance that he gave against the Blue J-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-Ros, where apparently the Astros knew what was coming, ruined his career. Right. Firstly, I think the case will probably get removed to a federal court. I think venue and jurisdiction is going to be a big battleground.

Right. You don't want a L.A. jury filled with Dodgers fans deciding whether or not, you know, the Astros should be culpable and pay a bunch of money. But I will say, when you first see it, you think this is why people hate lawyers, this idiot, but then you dig into the facts a bit. He got sent down the day after. Oh, no. He got fired at the end of the season.

Oh, I hate his. I hate what this is going. I do. And you know that Adam's character, no relation to me, the fan that recorded all the trash can. Right. The game with the most trash can bangs was that game. And he had 12 bangs on his pitches.

So it sounds like the cheating kind of led to this guy getting fired. And you hate that. Like when I saw the headline, this is the stupidest thing I ever saw. And it does seem like one game shouldn't blow your career. And he was a mediocre pitcher. But it does kind of seem like getting lit up for four runs got him fired. But can I use what he's done in the past, which is nothing spectacular?

Of course. Okay. Of course. And that's the argument. It's all about causation. Well, he was mediocre. He was substandard, blah, blah, blah. But he got sent down the next day.

He basically got fired the very next day. Yeah. So the Astros case, I guess, would be that, I mean, like you said, one game isn't going to ruin everything. And also, the Astros in 2017 went up probably, I mean, probably hundreds of pictures or whatever. And all of them didn't perform as poorly as he did, even if they were cheating against them. Yeah, no, I think it's a nonsense lawsuit at the end of the day. But I don't hate the lawyer or the pitcher as much when I looked into the details

because it does look like the cheating was a catalyst. And in the pandering of the lawsuit, oh, I want $31 million to give the charities in Los Angeles. That isn't going to help its cause, is it? I mean, it would sell to potential jurors in L.A. that's what it's all about. Okay, so he wants a jury trial in LA. You think it's going to get kicked immediately? I don't know if it'll get kicked immediately.

I think hopefully it'll get removed to federal court and taken where it should be. It should be here in Houston, right? This is where the defendant is. But there are a lot of smart lawyers out there, and venue is a big battleground. I think the fight will be for the Astros to move it here or somewhere out of California. And, of course, he was playing for the Blue Jays. The only reason it's filed in California has to be. be the fact that he thinks he'll have the most sympathetic judge and jury out there.

Which is fair to say. They're nuts in California. Yeah, let's go find, what is a jury trial? 11, 13? 12. 12, okay. Close. What, I was in between.

Hey, man, you hit right around. Yeah, right around. The first guess would have got John Wheeler 4. So you're telling me that this jury of 11, 12, or 13, depending, would have gone in there and said, yeah, I'm going to listen to this case logically and not in favor the asterist. There's not a chance. You know, I, you take forever to find a jury that would be able to do that. I have a lot of people who don't watch baseball.

I don't know. I have convinced a bunch of jurors not to believe their lying eyes and find very guilty clients innocent, right? I'm going to be honest. You know, I've been on all sides of it as a police officer and a judge, but as a defense attorney, I have walked into trial thinking there's no way I'm going to win this, and then I amaze myself. So good lawyering, it could happen, right?

And there is some causation issues when you look at the totality of his markedly mediocre career, right? The guy isn't a wonderkin. He isn't a superstar. He was just a decent pitcher. I think he wants the attention. I don't think he'll ever get paid. I think it'll get removed. Hopefully you get here.

But there is some substance to it. Does his attorney tick the case on a contingency basis? I would assume, yes. I mean, I think this is all. Because even if you don't ever make a dollar, the amount of publicity you get there in L.A. is great for your career. And I think it's all.

And he's got Mark Garrague. He's got famous attorney. And, you know, it's all, so it's Garagos, who was the guy that. That name sounds familiar. Yeah, Garagos was the guy. He's worked on all the high profile cases. The last time he made the news was bad for him is when Avanotti was trying to extort Nike, right? Okay.

They were at his offices. You know, but, yeah, it's most certainly on a contingency, and it probably won't go anywhere. It's a novel theory, but the cheating probably did get this guy fired. I mean, I hate to say it, right? Okay. So now the Astros are going to spend some time on this. They're going to have to. And a lot of money.

So at worst case, they're going to be billable hours. Oh, no, there will be some downtown lawyers. The lawyers always win, right? Right. The lawyers typically always win as long as the bills are paid. That's what Alan Dershowitz always said, you know, I never got paid by OJ. So it was just a loss for me. But as long as you're getting paid, the lawyers win.

And I do think this is, it's at least a novel legal theory. and I am the scandal the lawyers I want to hate have you seen the ones with the advertisements if you were a season ticket holder in 2017 those are like the hateable lawyers Can we get Can this group add more players to it

to maybe perhaps a class action suit against after? I don't think you're going to get to the point of a class action I think you always have to show causation and that's what's different with Bolsinger is he got fired the next morning right I mean but what if I went to the Blue Jays and said was Mike Bolson

a part of your organization for the long term What if they would have said we were going to let him go next day? Right. Then clearly you're going to depose the management there at the time. And hopefully they back the Astros. You know, hopefully don't say, yeah, he got lit up that night. Because we've seen guys all the time. We see it.

Guys will come up for a day or a week a month. And no matter what they do, because of roster spots, guys coming off the disabled list, they get sent back. Right. No. And clearly if the Blue Jays management doesn't back this story, but he did get rocked. And he was a guy that bounced around, but he got rocked at five. There's also in the Wall Street Journal report that came out Friday, it talks about how internally the Astros were emailing about how teams were catching on, but some teams didn't seem to care. And it says Blue Jays and Oakland A's.

So those were in the second half of the season. So it's like the Blue Jays might have known about the thing and not said anything to their players. I think a lot of people were cheating. I just think we happen to employ Benedict Arnold as a pitcher. And he's the reason we got busted. That's not the lawyer talking. sports fan. Benedict fires.

Anyone that says that cheating isn't a... When people want to draw an analogy to the Black Sox is what I find most disgusting, because the White Sox threw the game for money. We were trying to win, and there has been cheating in baseball trying to...

It's not like football or basketball. Cheating is a part of baseball, whether it's, you know, Pintar or spitball or whatever it is. It's not... It's just the Astros were far smarter about it. Because we had some geniuses in our front office that got ran off. I mean, they used an algorithm.

Google. They went on Google on stealing sides. And I kind of, I'm impressed. Is there anything the Astros can do to make this go away quickly short of writing in a check? Not short of writing in a check, probably. And it's great for the news. So this 24-hour news sports cycle, it's going to be all over the news. People love to hate Houston the first place.

They have even more reason to hate the Astros. What the Astros need to do is go out and win the series in 2020. That's the resolution, right? When there's absolutely no possibility of cheating, we go out there and spank them and especially spank the Dodgers. I'd love to see the Dodgers again. That'd be great. Oh, my God. And just crush them.

And let's remind everybody, we won the series in L.A., right? With all this crying and whining. One, two, and seven there, yeah. Yeah. And it's nonsense. All right, anything else that we should expect in this legality of law We've seen Astro fans class action. We've seen Dodger fans. We've seen a pitcher. What's the next thing to drop? I don't think the Dodgers fans or the Astros fans get any traction. I think that's merely just lawyers trying to get attention. It's nonsense.

I think actually, I think Bolsinger has the strongest case. I don't know. I think the Major League Baseball has kind of put it to bed. I hope they don't. You know, there's a push to punish the players, right? And I think that's just absurd. They don't create the system. just playing ball and it's not and rome and rob manfred gave them uh you know leniency or not immunity immunity immunity basically right but it's just everyone i don't know i don't know i you know it's houston against the world constantly anyway right i mean we need let's fire bill o'brien oh i'm not disagree with that let's let's let's get a you know take the next step forward with the with the rockets to actually bring home a championship and i don't know what that component is but tellman's got to be willing to spend the money because it's a

great team and the Astros just stay the course let's not I don't know we might have lost the course with our new GM but no they'll be fine I think James Click seems smart oh James Click seems very smart people keep saying we look alike which I don't find him attractive so it hurts my feeling no actually Adam Clanton got a lot of rub the wrong direction about him is like that's his older brother Adam Klein's a much handsomer guy than me and click right I mean he's a pretty boy y'all station right so I mean it's pretty is a strong term I mean you clearly have the prettiest head in sports radio. I'm the sexiest in the staff now. When I'm shaving my head, I actually have a picture of you next to my... All right, you've done so well today, you're our

official legal analyst. I am wonderful. There may be days there's nothing to talk about legally, we just call you anyway. Anytime you need me, sir. All right, remind the folks when you're going to be on again. I'll be on 7 and 9 on 950 KPRC. Only listen to that if there's not something better on 790, because we all love sports radio. And it's Ed Big Angry Law on Twitter and Instagram. Perfect. And you can listen to you at 7 because of the Rockets at 8 tonight. on 7-90s. Thanks, Anger. Appreciate it.

Charles Adams, Big Anger with us here on the Matt Thomas show.