Despite promising to pay for Eric Kay\u2019s legal expenses, the Los Angeles Angels have allegedly left their imprisoned ex-communications director\u2019s attorney with a $130,000 bill.<\/p>\n
Kay\u2019s attorney, David Gerger, wrote in a legal filing that he was withdrawing from the case, after months of unpaid fees and expenses by the Angels.<\/p>\n
The Angels declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Kay\u2019s mother, Sandy Kay, confirmed Gerger\u2019s claim in an interview with The Athletic, saying \u201cThat\u2019s the information we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
In testimony, the Angels acknowledged that they had been paying for Eric Kay\u2019s legal fees<\/a> for months ahead of the landmark wrongful death civil trial brought by the family of Tyler Skaggs. The civil case settled on Dec. 19 for an undisclosed amount<\/a>, after nearly three months of legal proceedings.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Angels\u2019 decision to pull their funding for Eric Kay\u2019s defense isn\u2019t surprising,\u201d Skaggs attorney Leah Graham said of Gerger\u2019s filing. \u201cIt\u2019s a calculated business decision that we\u2019ve expected since the case settled.\u201d<\/p>\n Kay has been imprisoned since 2022. He was sentenced to 22 years for providing the fentanyl-laced pill that Skaggs ingested, leading to his death on July 1, 2019. Kay has been fighting his conviction through appeals, with the hopes of it being overturned.<\/p>\n Eric Kay, along with his mother Sandy Kay and sister Kelly Miller, was deferential to the Angels defense in their testimony. Kelly testified as a defense witness, and Eric offered to waive his doctor-patient privilege at the request of the team.<\/p>\n Gerger, the attorney representing Kay, wrote in his filing that an attorney representing the Angels approached him in November 2024. They offered to pay for Gerger\u2019s legal representation of Kay, who otherwise could not afford an attorney.<\/p>\n The team sent payments to Gerger through June of 2025, Gerger wrote in the filing. Then the payments stopped.<\/p>\n On March 6, 2026 \u2014 the same day that Angels team president John Carpino announced his retirement \u2014 Gerger wrote that the Angels\u2019 attorney contacted him and said there would be no further payments. Gerger offered to be paid at a discounted rate, but the Angels\u2019 attorney once again refused, Gerger wrote.<\/p>\n Notably, the Angels\u2019 pre-trial strategy was to essentially re-try the criminal case against Kay, initially making the financial partnership between the two mutually beneficial.<\/p>\n However, the judge ruled that the team ultimately couldn\u2019t use that trial strategy, and that Kay\u2019s conviction and the facts established in that 2022 criminal proceedings had to be accepted by both sides in the 2025 civil trial.<\/p>\n Kay\u2019s attorney never received payment following the judge\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n The Skaggs legal team had long pushed back on the arrangement, and had looked to highlight it in their questioning of witnesses. That included Carpino\u2019s cross-examination on Dec. 17, when he testified that the Angels were still paying for Kay\u2019s legal fees.<\/p>\n Gerger requested that the judge appoint Kay new counsel, noting that Kay did gain positive momentum in his appeal. In February, federal judge Terry R. Means, who oversaw the criminal case, granted additional discovery to be done on Kay\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n Evidence specifically relating to medical examiner protocols, as well as Skaggs\u2019 cell phone, can now be submitted on Kay\u2019s behalf. Losing out on his legal representation, Gerger wrote, could impact that process.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout counsel, Mr. Kay, who is both incarcerated and a layman, will be at a severe disadvantage in developing those claims,\u201d Gerger wrote.<\/p>\n When reached by The Athletic, Gerger declined additional comment, but reiterated the claims in his filing.<\/p>\n With contributions from The Athletic\u2019s Nathan Fenno.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite promising to pay for Eric Kay\u2019s legal expenses, the Los Angeles Angels have allegedly left their imprisoned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2390],"tags":[291,5,1165,446,3223,774,56,3224,3222,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-668542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-angels","8":"tag-angels","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-angels","12":"tag-laangels","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-angels","15":"tag-losangeles","16":"tag-losangelesangels","17":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116364014261514007","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}