Piniella Denies Report He Will Move To Florida
An affidavit filed here says Seattle Mariners’ manager Lou Piniella plans to take a job with a team in Florida, where laws would prevent garnishment of his wages.
“There’s absolutely nothing to it,” Piniella told the Seattle Times.
Piniella’s wages are being garnished here to pay off a $350,000 business debt, according to the King County Superior Court filing by Seattle attorney William Murphy, who represents New York loan broker ALI Inc.
Murphy, trying to collect on an unpaid loan to Piniella and seven partners in a failed used-car dealership in Westchester County, N.Y., cited Piniella’s Florida attorney as the source of the information in his affidavit.
The Florida lawyer, Larry Solomon, confirmed speaking to Murphy but would not elaborate.
But Piniella’s Seattle attorney, Phillip Ginsberg, said Solomon “told me without equivocation that he did not say Mr. Piniella was going to Florida.”
Murphy stood by his affidavit, which says Solomon informed him “that Mr. Piniella does not intend to stay with the Mariners after this year but will leave to manage the professional baseball club in Florida.”
“No one has talked to us” about a change in plans, Mariners president Chuck Armstrong said.
Under baseball rules, Piniella cannot talk to another club about a job without clearance from the Mariners.
“We have no plans to release him,” Armstrong said. “We believe he’s happy here. We’re happy with Lou.”
At issue are state laws covering garnishment. In Florida, it is illegal to garnish the wage of a head of household. In Washington, up to 25 percent of a debtor’s income after taxes can be garnished, even if the debtor is a family’s chief wage-earner.
For Piniella, who earns about $50,000 a month before taxes, Washington’s law permits garnishment of up to $8,000 monthly.
Since the affidavit was filed, Piniella’s name has surfaced in reports of potential candidates for manager of Tampa Bay’s new baseball team, which is not scheduled to play until 1998. A Florida resident, Piniella lives in Tampa Bay during the off-season.
Piniella incurred the $347,635 debt when he agreed to lend his name to a dealership and guaranteed some loans. Lou Piniella Motors Inc. opened in 1990 in the New York suburbs but faltered after less than five years.