Retired umpires sue MLB claiming they were underpaid pension money - USA Today
Five recently retired umpires including Joe West – who officiated more games than anyone in baseball history – have filed a federal lawsuit against Major League Baseball claiming they were wrongfully underpaid in the MLB umpires’ retirement income plan.
The 44-page complaint was filed Sept. 29 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
There were at least two dozen retired umpires who were not provided the proper sum of money in their pension plan (“The American and National Leagues of Professional Baseball Clubs Retirement Income Plan for Umpires’’), according to attorney Paul Holmes, who’s representing the umpires along with Mark DeBofsky. Yet, only five umpires are part of this suit – all who have at least 25 years of major-league service and retired after the age of 65. They were underpaid the most, Holmes said, a total potential loss of about $2 million.
The umpires involved in the suit are West, Gerry Davis, Tom Hallion, Larry Vanover and Jerry Layne, who umpired a combined 21,063 regular-season games over 179 seasons, and retired after 2021. All five umpires were “paid far less than the full benefit earned under the Plan," according to the lawsuit. West and Vanover received their pension benefit in a lump-sum payment while the three others received annual payments.
“Those five are the ones who basically were the most adversely affected," Holmes told USA TODAY Sports. “They retired in their mid-to-late 60’s, and under the unique structure of the umpires' pension plan, MLB tried to short-change them."
MLB declined to comment because it’s an active lawsuit.
The umpires went through an administrative process in which their appeals were denied after complaints that began in November 2021, but when an MLB executive informed the umpires that “if you don’t like it, sue us," they decided to file suit.
The suit claims that there was a legal defect and misapplication of the retirement plan in calculating benefits, “including, but not limited to, a failure to provide actuarial increases to plan benefit amounts when the commencement of plan benefits is deferred beyond the umpire’s normal retirement age."
It also reads: “MLB was trying to hide the greater benefits under the 2005 Benefit Table after age 62 to encourage retirement at that age and to discourage umpires from continuing to work for MLB beyond age 62."
“MLB came up with a very unique and confusing benefit formula," Holmes said. “So, it was hard to tell what was exactly being promised. They then implemented several different administrative procedures and flat-out made mistakes.
“We’re pretty sure they were not accidents, they were intentional. When the same mistake is made for multiple people, over and over again, especially when we pointed out the mistakes, it’s not a mistake. Once is a mistake, ten to 12 times is a pattern.
“It was intentional underpayment hoping they wouldn’t get caught."
MLB readily admitted mistakes, Holmes said, and made an offer to reimburse the umpires for some of the money lost, but the umpires rejected the offer, believing it was inadequate.
“The table schedule in pension amounts were wrong," Holmes said. There were reductions, showing benefits going up until 62, and then down for three years. You can’t have one high pension at one age and then lower as you get older. Multiple umpires were paid the wrong form of payments.
“It was a problem that never got fixed.’’
