LOS ANGELES — Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer filed a defamation lawsuit against the sports news website Deadspin on Thursday, claiming the outlet “knowingly published false information” in its coverage of sexual assault allegations made against Bauer last year.
The lawsuit contends that Deadspin “capitalized on a false accusation” that the pitcher fractured the skull of a woman who filed a petition for a restraining order against him. The lawsuit says that while other outlets later corrected their reporting after medical records attached to the woman’s petition showed no skull fracture and instead described an acute head injury, Deadspin “pushed forward with the false narrative of a skull fracture.”
The Los Angeles Times was among the media outlets that reported the court filing and later published a correction to its description of the woman’s head injury.
Last August, the woman was denied a permanent restraining order by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. Last month, the L.A. County District Attorney declined to charge Bauer with a crime.
Bauer hasn’t pitched for the Dodgers since being placed on administrative leave last July following the emergence of the accusations, and could still be suspended by Major League Baseball under the league’s domestic violence and sexual assault policy.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Thursday in the Southern District of New York, specified one Deadspin article that stated Bauer “allegedly cracked a woman’s skull.” According to the lawsuit, Deadspin based that accusation on a separate report from the Athletic that had said “there were signs of basilar skull fracture.”
The lawsuit said that, while the Athletic later updated its article to note “medical records showed that while the woman was initially diagnosed with signs of a basilar skull fracture, a subsequent CT scan found no acute fracture,” Deadspin and its managing editor, Chris Baud, ignored multiple requests from Bauer’s representatives to issue a correction and later made “wholly inadequate changes” to the article.
The lawsuit also said the article was “the culmination of a campaign to maliciously target and harass Mr. Bauer” by Deadspin.
Baud is listed as a defendant in the lawsuit along with Deadspin’s owner, G/O Media, Inc.
