Former Marlin Avi Garcia’s lawsuit blames UM doctors for the end of his career
Who’s to blame for outfielder Avi Garcia’s Marlins career paralleling loanDepot Park’s commercial spaces as an expensive nothing for something?
A lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court fingers University of Miami Miller School of Medicine doctors.
UM’s response, filed last week: Not our fault. Maybe it’s Garcia’s.
Garcia announced his retirement in February, almost two years after playing his last game, 18 games into the third season of a four-year $53-million deal with the Marlins. Of his total 153 games with the Marlins, 55 were spread over the last two seasons, 2023 and 2024, as Garcia dealt with back injuries the lawsuit says were exacerbated by negligence by UM doctors.
The lawsuit, filed for Garcia and wife Anakarina Jaspe by Silva & Silva’s Jorge Silva, faulted the doctors for “failing to properly examine, evaluate, diagnose, and treat Avisail Antonio Garcia” and “failing to communicate the correct diagnosis to Avisail Antonio Garcia.”
The doctors named by the lawsuit: Michael G. Baraga; Andrew L. Sherman; Michael Y. Wang; Bryan Lubomirsky; Natalya Nagornaya; and Joseph P. Gjolaj.
The response, from Fowler White Burnett’s Christopher Knight, George Koonce and Marc Schleier, said Garcia’s “alleged injuries” weren’t caused by negligence and Garcia himself “was guilty of negligence and carelessness, and this negligence and carelessness was a proximate cause of the alleged damages herein.”
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Back problems
Over the seven seasons before the Marlins signed Garcia in November 2021, he averaged 115.7 games played, 16.1 home runs and a .269 batting average for the Chicago White Sox, Milwaukee and Tampa Bay. His career highs in batting average (.330), on-base percentage (.380) and slugging percentage (.506) put him in the 2017 MLB All-Star Game. The Marlins signed him off a career best 29 home runs in 2021 for Milwaukee.
But, at 31, Garcia’s first season with the Marlins included a hamstring injury that held him to only 98 games and a .224 batting average in 2022.
READ MORE: Avisail Garcia hears you booing, Marlins fans. Here’s what he has to say about that
The Marlins 2023 season was 16 games old when, the lawsuit said, left lumbar pain and lower back and left glute tightness sent Garcia to Marlins team physician Baraga on April 16.
“Dr. Baraga performed a physical exam and attributed Avi’s symptoms to lumbar paraspinal muscle tightness,” the lawsuit said. “Dr. Baraga’s plan was to initiate anti-inflammatories, as needed, and continue “treatments.””
Baraga eventually recommended an MRI of Garcia’s spine. The lawsuit claims radiologist Lubomirsky “failed to appreciate or report” stress fractures on both sides of Garcia’s vertabrae.
The lawsuit says radiologist Natalya Nagornaya looked over a second MRI of the lumbar spine at UM Miller School of Medicine on June 4. Nagornaya saw stress fractures on the L5 vertabrae and a disc herniation that compressed the left L3 nerve root. She also, the lawsuit said, recommended a CAT scan of the lumbar spine to “better evaluate” the fractures.
But, the lawsuit said, that scan never got ordered.
“Had the defendant, by and through its multiple physicians, acted appropriately based on the findings on the MRI of June 4, 2023, which unambiguously and clearly reported “bilateral L5 pars interarticularis defect,” Avi would have had a targeted plan of treatment for his specific condition Instead, for over one full year, his treatment consisted of injections and therapy that was dramatically deleterious, including weightlifting and high-intensity baseball. All Avi needed was rest and possibly a back brace.”
The response by the UM doctors lawyers’ said, Garcia “was fully informed of the risks of the treatment provided to him and, with appreciation of those risks, voluntarily participated in conduct that exposed him to the damages now complained of...”
