Court: Investigators Can Keep Positive Test Results

In this file photo taken Aug. 27, 2006, San Francisco Giants' Barry Bonds waits for an at-bat against the Cincinnati Reds, during a baseball game in San Francisco. The names and urine samples of about 100 Major League Baseball players who tested positive three years ago can be used by federal investigators, a court ruled Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2006, _ a decision that could have implications for Barry Bonds. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File) (Marcio Jose Sanchez - AP)

Federal investigators can keep the positive drug test results for more than 100 Major League Baseball players -- who have not been publicly identified -- that they seized during raids of baseball's testing laboratories two years ago, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled yesterday, overturning in part a lower court ruling.

The decision means additional major league players could get swept up in the probe into sports doping that began in 2003 when a raid of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) in Burlingame, Calif., yielded information that tied dozens of elite and professional athletes to steroids and other drugs.

San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds is already the subject of a perjury investigation in connection with the investigation, and the home of former Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Jason Grimsley was searched for drugs by BALCO investigators last summer after Grimsley admitted using human growth hormone and other drugs.

Lower courts had sided with the Major League Baseball Players Association, which cited privacy concerns in arguing that investigators were entitled only to the drug test results for 10 players with ties to the BALCO lab and should return the others.

The positive test results came during the 2003 season, when a program of confidential testing was undertaken jointly by Major League Baseball and the MLBPA to determine whether the sport had a problem with steroid abuse. No players who tested positive were identified, and none received penalties.

In a 100-plus page opinion, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco ruled investigators did not necessarily have to return information about other major league players that was found intermingled with computer data on the 10 players who were the subject of the search, and it also ruled that a subpoena for all of the positive drug test results from 2003 should not have been quashed by a lower court judge.

The opinion from Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, Sidney R. Thomas, and Richard C. Tallman included a partial dissent from Thomas.

Elliot R. Peters, a San Francisco-based attorney for the players' association, could not immediately be reached for comment. A spokesman in the players' association's New York office said the agency would have no comment until today.