Neiman Nix was a draftee of the Cincinnati Reds in 1998 but multiple arm surgeries derailed his career before it began. Then he got into the sports clinic business and ran one in Miami. He’s out of that business now. He says he’s out of it because Major League Baseball investigators forced him out of business during the course of the Biogenesis investigation:
. . . according to Nix, the investigators MLB sent to South Florida to probe Biogenesis and its proprietor, Tony Bosch, became so obsessed with the idea that Nix was engaged in similarly shady behavior that they called all of his clients to warn them off and eventually got him banned from Facebook and PayPal.
But Nix swears he has done nothing wrong and is now suing MLB and three officials, claiming they wrecked his clinic and cost him millions in revenue. “It’s unbelievable what they did to him,” says Sholom Boyer, Nix’s attorney. “It’s the ultimate David versus Goliath.”
Nix is suing Major League Baseball and has named the two investigators who MLB fired a couple of weeks ago just before it was reported that they purchased stolen documents. Nix says he never gave patients/clients any drugs that were either illegal or which required a prescription. His complaint alleges slander, tortious interference, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, among other claims.
It’s hard to say how much weight to give all of this. On the one hand, the more we learn about that investigation the shadier it seems. On the other hand, while the investigation seemed to be profoundly overzealous, everything we’ve read about it makes it seem as if that overzealousness was aimed at taking down big-name MLB players and there is no apparent connection between Nix and any of them. One wonders, then, why investigators would go out of their way to take this guy out too.
At the moment it’s just a complaint, so it’s early in the process. MLB, for its part, is calling the lawsuit “baseless.” And if anyone knows about baseless lawsuits it’s Major League Baseball. But, Major League Baseball also knows that baseless lawsuits actually get results sometimes too, so they shouldn’t be too dismissive.
