AP file photo
One of Major League Baseball’s most prolific sluggers has disappeared like one of his towering round-trippers of yesteryear.
A New Orleans-area law firm has been attempting to serve Sammy Sosa with a lawsuit alleging he owes $161,500 for an Aspen home he had agreed to rent over the holidays from Dec. 22, 2017 to Jan. 8, 2018. The suit was originally filed in November in Pitkin County District Court, but the litigants have had no success tracking down the one-time darling of baseball and the Chicago Cubs, where he spent his glory years from 1992 to 2004.
“We have hired a private process server in Florida” to serve Sosa, said Chadna Gauthier of the firm Law Office of Daniel Becnel, which is trying to recoup the money it claims Sosa owes to the owner of a home on Snowbunny Lane.
The firm believes Sosa, 50, resides in Aventura, Florida, according to court documents it introduced April 3.
Plaintiff and homeowner MWTK Snowbunny Lane LLC also claims Sosa used a Miami limited liability company — Riverhead Homes — to agree to rent a home for 17 days during the Christmas holidays of 2017. Sosa and the LLC, however, paid neither the required $100,000 deposit nor the agreed amount of $9,500 per day to rent the Snowbunny Lane home, the suit alleges.
“Mr. Sosa failed to provide the required deposit despite numerous requests, and ultimately due to his failure, the homeowners suffered significant financial loss due to the inability to find a new renter so close to Christmas,” said the suing attorneys in a statement issued in November, at the time of the suit’s filing. “Despite request of payment of the contract, Mr. Sosa and his representatives failed to respond or address this matter.”
The Becnels, who own property in Aspen, were unavailable for comment Wednesday.
The suit originally named Riverhead Homes as the defendant, but the firm filed an amended complain Feb. 26 identifying Sosa as a defendant, as well.
The revised lawsuit claims Sosa committed to renting the home under the name of Riverhead Homes, and employed a registered agent for the LLC “to shield himself from liability.”
The six-bedroom, eight-bathroom home, located at 1260 Snowbunny Lane, spans 7,712 square feet and was built in 2016, according to property records.
Sosa was considered a shoo-in for the Baseball Hall of Fame before he was implicated in the sport’s performance-enhancing drug scandal last decade. He closed his career with 609 home runs, ninth on MLB’s all-time leaders list.