While the Marlins haven't exactly produced must-watch baseball on the field, the comedy of errors from the front office has been more than enough to keep baseball fans entertained.
In the Marlins' latest attempt to keep sole possession of first place as the laughingstock of MLB, the team is trying to avoid going to court in Miami by claiming that it is actually a corporate citizen of the British Virgin Islands — where a minority shareholder of the Derek Jeter-formed ownership group Marlins Teamco resides, according to the Miami Herald.
The move is in response to a lawsuit from Miami-Dade County filed against Jeffrey Loria and current Marlins owners over an ongoing profit-sharing dispute.
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In 2009, the Loria-owned Marlins agreed that if the team was sold within 10 years, the county would get 5 percent of the profits from that sale. When the team was sold in 2017 for $1.2 billion, Loria claimed he lost $140 million, arguing that he and the Marlins didn't owe any money to the county. The county didn't buy the explanation and sued Loria and the current Marlins ownership group.
The Herald reports that this is all just to avoid one specific Miami-Dade judge who's already ruled against the franchise in a preliminary hearing. The international citizenship claim would change the jurisdiction of the case to a federal level, rather than state.
The county apparently isn't having it.
Miami-Dade not buying effort by Derek Jeter lawyers to have the Miami Marlins declared a foreign citizen for the purposes of deciding where to hear a county lawsuit against the team and Jeffrey Loria. pic.twitter.com/vCS6frpU5Y
— Doug Hanks (@doug_hanks) April 9, 2018
The Marlins declined to comment Monday, according to The Herald.