The long-running fight between the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals over television rights fees reached New York’s highest court Tuesday when a lawyer for the Orioles argued a $296.8 million award for 2012-16 made by a panel of baseball executives should be thrown out and the case reheard by a different forum.
Derek L. Shaffer, a lawyer for the Nationals, told the six judges of the New York Court of Appeals they should affirm the decision, as New York Supreme Court Justice Joel M. Cohen did in 2019 and an appellate panel did the following year. Shaffer predicted additional litigation between the teams in a dispute that could hold up a potential sale of the Nationals, which said last April they were exploring the marketplace.