For a few brief moments, the panel of potential jurors who may soon decide whether the Los Angeles Angels bear any legal responsibility for the shocking death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs was thrust on Wednesday afternoon into an unexpected, temporary role — public sports pundit.
Asked by an attorney for the team to describe the first thing that popped into their heads when they heard the words “Angels baseball,” many of the potential jurors mixed general recollections of fond family fun at the ballpark with specific disappointment at the current state of the franchise.
“It is getting frustrating,” one man said, referencing the departure several years ago of Shohei Ohtani and the remaining team’s struggles on the field.
“I like the Angels when they are doing good,” another man said, drawing laughs from other prospective jurors in a packed courtroom gallery.
“My first thought is the team is struggling now,” a woman answered. “My son, even though he is a die-hard fan, is disappointed in the roster.”
“Is your son available as a jury member?” Angels’ attorney Todd Theodora responded, drawing more chuckles from the crowd.
Others recalled more positive ball club memories — one woman described going to a game at the ballpark wearing “a silly little fish head” soon after the major league debut of Mike Trout, adding, “It was great.” Another brought up the Rally Monkey, the unofficial mascot that drew fans together during the team’s 2002 World Series Run.
The back and forth with the 20 prospective jury members sitting in and in front of the jury box in a Santa Ana courtroom was a relative moment of levity in a day full of often emotional descriptions of how drug addiction — a topic at the center of the wrongful death trial — impacted the lives of potential jurors.
For Theodora, the Angels’ attorney, and Skaggs’ family attorney Rusty Hardin — two veteran litigators with deep histories of handling high-profile civil trials — the questioning was an effort to make sure that seated jurors will be able to set aside any fondness or bitterness toward the ballclub — as well as their own deep-seated feelings about the impact of drug addiction — and instead only consider the evidence presented at trial.
Of the 20 prospective jurors undergoing questioning by attorneys late Wednesday, five raised their hands when asked if they considered themselves Angels fans, though one couched it a little more than slightly by describing them as “one of my top three teams.” All said they could set aside their feelings about the club when it came to a trial.
Despite the expected length of the trial — which the judge cautioned could last until Dec. 12, albeit with a weeklong break for Thanksgiving — and the downtime familiar to anyone who has taken part in jury service, prospective jurors seemed to be in generally good spirits throughout the first three days of jury selection. The group jokingly applauded early Tuesday afternoon when the first prospective juror was called into the courtroom and into the jury box, leading Orange County Superior Court Judge H. Shaina Colover to quip, “It feels like there should be some music playing.”
The judge provided the group with a brief description of the civil case, noting that Skaggs was a pitcher for the team at the time of his death and mentioning Eric Kay, the former Angels public relations director who has been convicted of providing Skaggs with drugs the night Skaggs died of what was later determined to be a lethal combination of fentanyl, oxycodone and alcohol.
Hardin, who handled jury questioning on behalf of the Skaggs family, focused largely on their experience with addiction. One by one, prospective jurors — at times in emotional terms — described having family or friends battle with drug or alcohol addiction, or knowing people who had overdosed and died.
“I have seen many people recover or succumb to their choices,” one juror told Hardin, after describing growing up in an area where drug use was prevalent.
Most — but by no means all — of the prospective jurors said they could set their feelings about addiction aside in order to consider only the evidence at trial.
Hardin and Theodora both asked prospective jurors about their feelings toward corporations. Hardin focused on whether a business has a responsibility to protect employees from being exposed to drugs by other employees. Theodora asked about how positively or negatively the group viewed corporations. Both questions drew a wide range of responses, from prospective jurors who said employees are responsible for themselves to those who described general skepticism toward corporations.
On both Monday and Tuesday, medics were called to assist members of the jury pool. On Monday afternoon, a man exited the courtroom and told a bailiff he felt like he was having a heart attack. On Tuesday morning, a man collapsed in the hallway after apparently walking up the stairs to the tenth-floor courtroom. Both appeared to be alert by the time medical officials arrived to help them.
For the jurors who are ultimately seated, the central question will likely be whether the Angels knew — or at least should have known — about Skaggs’ drug use prior to his death. Attorneys for the Skaggs allege that at least one team official learned several months before the pitchers’ death that Kay was providing him with drugs. Attorneys for the Angels counter that Kay and Skaggs had a clandestine arrangement that ballclub officials weren’t aware of, in which Kay would obtain street drugs Skaggs paid for.
The Skaggs’ family is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars, which means even a jury finding that the Angels were only partially responsible for Skaggs’ death could open the doors to a significant financial penalty.
Prospective jurors late Wednesday were ordered to return to the courtroom on Friday morning. The judge told the jurors that she hoped to finish the jury selection process by the end of Friday.