Umpires Awarded Back Pay

Major League Baseball was ordered by a federal judge to give five umpires $3.1 million to cover back pay, interest and medical costs as part of a lawsuit stemming from their failed mass resignation in 1999.

After the Supreme Court declined in January 2005 to hear an appeal of a lower-court ruling, baseball tried last November to give Gary Darling, Bill Hohn, Larry Poncino, Larry Vanover and Joe West more than $1.9 million to cover salary, bonuses and medical costs for September 1999 and the 2000 and 2001 seasons, with management taking a $122,000 credit for the umpires’ estimated earnings during that time.

But the umpires instructed their banks to refuse the payments, and they went back to the court.

In an order signed Thursday and entered Friday in federal court in Philadelphia, U.S. District Judge Petrese B. Tucker ordered baseball to pay the five $3,106,368 and awarded the Major League Umpires Assn. -- their union at the time -- attorneys’ fees and costs associated with the latest phase of the case. The union was told to submit a request for the fees and costs to the court.

In addition, baseball was told to make pension contributions of $47,422 on behalf of Poncino and $42,356 on behalf on Vanover.

Twenty-two umpires lost their jobs in September 1999 after the failed mass resignation. An arbitrator decided in May 2001 that 11 of the umps should be rehired, and these five were brought back in partial settlement in February 2002, an agreement that left the issue of back pay to be decided by the courts.

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