Jun 13, 2003  |  By: KEVIN SPENCE  | COMMENTS     

NEW YORK — A state appeals court dismissed a $50 million lawsuit filed by a former New York Yankees clubhouse worker. The 5-0 decision by the State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division on May 29 reversed a lower court ruling that had allowed most of Paul Priore’s claims survive the trial.

Priore, a 39-year-old former assistant equipment manager, maintains that the jury was biased. Priore sued the Yankees in State Supreme Court in the Bronx in 1998.

He alleged that after he began working for the team in 1996, several players made anti-gay remarks and harassed him. He also claimed that after team officials learned he was HIV-positive, they fired him on Aug. 1, 1997.

Priore has also insisted that he had sexual relations with three Yankee players, who he said tried to rape and sodomize him while he was working for the franchise.

Priore said some Yankee players, trainers and other personnel were nearby when the assault took place in the Yankee clubhouse. After the alleged assault, Priore claimed he punched one of the players in the groin before he managed to get away. Then, some of the players went after one of the batboys, he said.

“In a way, the organization is like the blue wall of silence, like the police department,” Priore said. “Nobody denied it publicly. That proves that they know.”

If there was any doubt, he said, someone would have come forward to deny the testimony. They stayed quiet, he insisted, because “they knew that it was true.”

The Yankees countered in court that Priore was fired because of theft. Team officials said he had stolen T-shirts, baseballs, and broken bats.

“The T-shirts they were referring to, were purchased by my father,” Priore said. “Technically, that is my property that they were accusing me of stealing. They accused me of theft as a cover-up.”

Priore said he had informed the Yankees’ dentist, Dr. Ira Tunik, that he had sero-converted. “I disclosed it to him as a precaution,” Priore said.

In dismissing the lawsuit, the appeals court said there was no evidence that team officials knew that Priore had the AIDS virus, according to the Associated Press.

Tunik told the Blade that he was unaware of the case.

2-year affair with player alleged
Priore also said he had a two-year relationship with an unnamed Yankee baseball player. “We had an intimate relationship on a sexual basis,” he said. “I believed I was going to have an honest, truthful relationship.”

He said the two had sex in the stadium, in the clubhouse, a storage room, the gym and at the Radisson Hotel in New Jersey. “He called me baby, sweetheart,” Priore said. “He did not know I was HIV-positive.”

Priore said they always used protection. He would not disclose the name of the player to the Blade.

Calls to the Yankees’ attorney, Jonathan Saulds, with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer Feld LLC in Manhattan were not returned.

Priore’s lawyer said the case, in its present form, has run its course through the judicial system.

“We have no right to appeal anymore,” said Priore’s attorney Edward J. Pavia, Jr. Pavia said they are moving to reargue the case in the appellate division: “If they deny re-argument and permission we will ask the court of appeals division for permission.”

Priore hopes that the appellate court will rule to have it reopened. He also claimed to have audiotapes of players calling him names like, “faggot,” “queer” and “drag queen.”

According to Priore, some of the ballplayers asked him “Are you screwing the batboy?” and, “Do you have AIDS?” when his nose was bleeding.