A New York art dealer is accused of putting a squeeze play on baseball’s Montreal Expos and its minority owners in a scheme to eliminate the team.
A group of prominent Canadian companies cried foul yesterday, claiming Jeffrey Loria conspired with Major League Baseball and used “secrecy, deception and self-interest” to defraud them of their stake in the struggling club.
“This is the case of the grinches who stole the Montreal Expos,” said Jeffrey Kessler, a lawyer for the 14 firms who filed a federal lawsuit in Miami.
Loria, who runs the Jeffrey H. Loria & Co. art gallery on the Upper East Side, became a minority owner of the Expos and then managing general partner in 1999 after assuring city officials and the other team owners he’d help the club remain in Montreal and get it a new stadium.
The lawsuit claims Loria never carried out the promises because he was conspiring with Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who was “secretly determined” to kill the money-losing team to bolster the league’s profitability.
The suit also claims that in return Selig secretly negotiated a deal with Loria giving the 61-year-old art dealer control of the Florida Marlins instead.
The suit says the deal also:
Left Loria’s Canadian partners – who were never consulted about the agreement – with a minority stake in the Florida franchise;
Handed ownership of the Expos over to the league;
Allowed former Marlins owner John Henry to take over the Boston Red Sox.
Both Major League Baseball officials and Loria – an former all-city baseball player at Stuyvesant High School – declined to comment until they read the lawsuit.
The Canadian group is seeking $100 million in punitive damages and more than $100 million in compensatory damages, which could be tripled under a federal racketeering statute.
“As limited partners, we had been kept totally in the dark,” said Sam Minzburg, another lawyer for the plaintiffs.
“Baseball has been acting like the Soviet Politburo here.”