A Florida appeals court has affirmed the ruling of the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County in a case where a former professional baseball player and his company alleged claims of invasion of privacy, misappropriation of trade secrets, and aiding and abetting a tortfeasor against defendants who it claimed were acting on behalf of Major League Baseball.
The appeals court reasoned that the appellants’ claims were barred by res judicata because these claims had already been resolved on the merits in previous cases, most recently when the trial court granted a motion for summary judgment.
The appellants in the case were Neiman Nix, a former professional baseball player, and his sports supplement company, DNA Sports Performance Lab, Inc. The court noted that the appellants had filed at least seven other lawsuits dating back to 2014, each founded on the same alleged facts “that agents of the MLB hacked or illegally accessed their online banking and social media accounts in order to steal personal data and trade secret information and interfere with their business, allegedly as part of a ‘black op’ against prohibited substance use in professional baseball.”
The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the MLB, on res judicata grounds. Under Florida law, res judicata bars future suits involving the same parties, cause of action, and claims that have already been adjudicated on the merits.
In the latest appeal, the appellants claimed that the trial court could not find their claims barred by res judicata because the facts and parties of the instant action differ from the prior ones, namely in the respect that the appellants “have now identified Ricardo Burnham as the alleged MLB operative who purportedly stole their account passwords (by impersonating a police officer) and named Burnham as an individual defendant. However, as the trial court correctly found, this alone does not make the instant case distinguishable from the prior ones for res judicata purposes.”
The appeals court noted that “a judgment rendered by a court of competent jurisdiction, on the merits, is a bar to any future suit between the same parties or their privies upon the same cause of action, so long as it remains unreversed.” McGregor v. Provident Tr. Co. of Phila., 119 Fla. 718, 162 So. 323, 327 (Fla. 1935).
Furthermore, four elements must be met for a lawsuit to be barred: “(1) identity of thing sued for, (2) identity of the cause of action, (3) identity of the persons and parties to the actions, and (4) identity of the quality or capacity of the person for or against whom the claim is made.” Chavez v. Tower Hill Signature Ins. Co., 278 So. 3d 231, 236 (Fla. 3d DCA 2019) (quotation omitted). The appeals court added that “except in limited circumstances, not present here, a dismissal of an action operates as an adjudication on the merits for res judicata purposes.” See Allie v. Ionata, 503 So. 2d 1237, 1242 (Fla. 1987) (“Unless otherwise specifically exempted, a dismissal constitutes an adjudication on the merits.”).
Identity of parties for res judicata purposes “has been broadly interpreted to include more than just record parties—so that, for example, a person in privity with a record party, as well as a person who controls for his own interest a record party, may invoke the doctrine of res judicata.” West v. Kawasaki Motors Mfg. Corp., U.S.A., 595 So. 2d 92, 94 (Fla. 3d DCA 1992) (finding that res judicata barred products-liability claims against motorcycle manufacturer where plaintiffs previously received adverse judgment in claims against distributor).
“Because the complaint here directly asserts that Mr. Burnham and the other individual defendants named in this action were employees of the MLB and acting on its behalf, we agree that the parties are identical to the dismissed prior actions,” the court wrote, citing Nix v. Baseball, No. 159953/2016, 2018 WL 2739433 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Jun. 7, 2018); DNA Sports Performance Lab, Inc. v. Major League Baseball, No. C 20-00546 WHA, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 199891, 2020 WL 6290374 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 27, 2020).
“We also agree that the claims here arise from an identical factual background predicated on the MLB’s alleged efforts to interfere with Appellants’ business, and thus that the causes of action are identical as well.” See Atlantic Shores Resort, LLC v. 507 S. St. Corp., 937 So. 2d 1239, 1243 n.3 (Fla. 3d DCA 2006) (“The determining factor in deciding whether the cause of action is the same is whether the facts or evidence necessary to maintain the suit are the same in both actions.” (quotation omitted)).
Thus, it affirmed.
Neiman Nix, et al. v. The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, et al.; Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District; No. 3D23-1486; 4/23/25
