Women’s Baseball League CEO Fires Board Member After $600K Offer to Drop Case

The CEO of the Women’s Pro Baseball League offered a board member $600,000 to drop her legal fight against him and the league for financial transparency.

She refused, and now, the CEO is firing her from her WPBL board position, effectively squashing her legal campaign.

On Wednesday morning, WPBL CEO Keith Stein wrote in an email to investors that he had removed Mina Kim, the league’s largest investor, from the league’s board.

In the message, obtained by Front Office Sports, Stein wrote: “I wish to advise you that Mina Kim was replaced as a board member today.”

Kim filed a case in Delaware over the summer demanding “books and records” from Stein and the league, but under Delaware law, she must be on the board to obtain the information she seeks. Stein said the WPBL is filing a motion to dismiss her case as a result of her removal.

Additionally, a confidential legal filing from earlier this month that accidentally became public said Kim rejected a $600,000 offer to drop her case. (That document is no longer publicly available.) The $600,000 offer was first reported by Erica Block.

Kim, who FOS previously reported invested $500,000 in the WPBL, filed this summer a books and records request in the Delaware Court of Chancery, a common destination for corporate disputes. Her initial legal filing described “mounting red flags” related to the WPBL’s business operations, as well as “improper stonewalling” when she sought financial records.

Earlier this month, Stein described Kim to FOS as a “disgruntled investor” who “wants more influence I think than a board member is entitled to have.” He also said her legal action has become a “witch hunt.” Stein, a Canadian attorney at the law firm Dentons, told FOS he owns about 65% of the league, and invested roughly $225,000 to get it off the ground, in light of Kim’s claims that no records exist of his investment.

“I understand that certain wounds do not heal over night,” Stein wrote in his Wednesday email. “But to Mina and anyone else who may not be pleased with me or any of my decisions, I want you to know that I am trying and really hope that you will accept my olive branch.”

The case was initially scheduled to go to trial on Sept. 21, but the judge overseeing the case, Magistrate in Chancery Danielle Gibbs, allowed the trial to move to papers. Stein previously told FOS that he had the ability to remove Kim from the board at the end of September. Gibbs has not issued a ruling in the case.

Stein Fires Kim

Stein sent an email to investors Wednesday morning saying Kim has been “replaced” as a board member, and that a motion to end her legal procedure was also being filed.

Stein said he takes “no personal satisfaction” in sharing the news, but hopes the league can “move forward as a more united group.” He said he will reach out to Kim to make a “regular meeting schedule” for her to continue giving input on the league.

Stein noted other changes coming for the WPBL, including an audit from a “national accounting firm” and a board-established “independent audit committee.” He said board member Andreas Kloppenborg, who also works at Stein’s Dentons law firm, has departed, and that former MLB pitcher and coach Dave Stewart will become a board member.

“Rather than fighting one another, we should be ready to fight off any parties out there who may be thinking about launching competitor leagues,” Stein wrote. “Infighting and negative media have only emboldened anyone who may be trying to capitalize on what we have created.”

A representative for Kim declined to comment on the firing and whether Kim would pursue another legal route. A representative for the WPBL did not immediately respond to a request for comment or answer which firm would conduct the audit. 

Kim is the second board member Stein has removed in recent months, following former chair Assia Grazioli-Venier. All remaining members of the board, including Stein’s former brother-in-law, were put in place by the CEO.

The $600K Offer

The details of the $600,000 offer are listed in a document filed by Kim’s attorneys called a pre-trial reply brief. The filing says that after her legal fight began, Kim was “offered an unauthorized $600,000 payment to abandon it,” which she rejected.

“An unauthorized payment offered to a director to make a books-and-records action go away is not evidence of a grievance on the director’s part; it is evidence of precisely the self-interested conduct a director is entitled to investigate,” the filing says.

The filing also says the “buyout” offer was not authorized by the WPBL’s board or “anyone with authority to bind WPBL.”

Through a representative, Stein declined to comment on several questions about the offer including how it was presented. Kim, also through a representative, declined to comment, but her representative added: “All of our filings with the Court have been true and accurate.”

Kim’s pre-trial reply brief is posted twice on the Court of Chancery’s docket, once in unredacted, “confidential” form on Sept. 16, and again in a “redacted public version” on Sept. 24.

Reached by phone, a member of the clerk’s office told FOS the document was not intended to be publicly available, and was unsealed in error. The filing has since been put under seal.

Stein previously told FOS the WPBL raised close to $3.3 million in its seed funding round and would have a “healthy seven-figure number in our bank account at the end of the season.” The Los Angeles Queens won the league’s inaugural championship last week.