How Roberto Alomar and Bill Ackman offer valuable, if opposing, lessons in accountability

Two stories this week provided lessons on power, optics and the decreasing relevance of the traditional legal process.

In 2021, Major League Baseball concluded an investigation of Roberto Alomar, handled by an outside law firm, after a woman alleged sexual misconduct dating back to 2014. MLB found the allegations credible and placed Alomar on its ineligible list. He was removed from advisory roles and dismissed by the Toronto Blue Jays.

The decision was decisive and public. His standing in the game changed overnight. This is despite his denial, even to date and in an interview this week in the Toronto Sun, that he did anything wrong, and his claim that the allegations were trumped up.

No criminal conviction. No civil judgment. But real consequences nonetheless.

That is what a governing body with authority can do.

Now turn to Bill Ackman.

Ackman is not a household name in the way athletes are, but in financial and political circles he is one of the most influential figures in the world. He is a billionaire hedge fund manager, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management and known for taking large, activist positions in public companies — often publicly pressuring corporate leadership, shaping board decisions and influencing markets.

Beyond finance, he is a highly visible voice on social and political issues, with a platform that extends far beyond investing. He quickly came out against universities that fostered antisemitism and organized his and other companies to not hire students who signed petitions, demonstrated or otherwise appeared pro-Hamas.

This week, Ackman published a post on X in which he described a personal situation involving an unnamed female CFO of one of his companies. He expressed significant emotional distress about how events had unfolded. He framed the situation in introspective terms, acknowledging regret, describing loss of sleep, and inviting public input on how to handle it.

But importantly, he did not provide a detailed factual account that could be independently tested. There was no formal admission of wrongdoing and no clearly defined claim against him was articulated.

Any reader of the post would conclude that this woman and her legal advisors were fabricating gold dust to extort him into a settlement. And that was his implicit suggestion. In fact, he made clear that he would fight this battle vigorously as he had had enough of plaintiff lawyers exaggerating or even fabricating claims to essentially extort businesses.

Ackman said just enough to strongly shape the narrative — without saying enough to create legal exposure.

That distinction matters.

Because once his post went public, the dynamic shifted immediately:

• He controls the framing of the story.
• He introduces the matter on his terms, not in response to someone else’s claim.
• He occupies the public space before any opposing account could gain traction.

This creates significant asymmetry.

If his accuser were to respond publicly, such as by issuing the statement of claim which had been threatened by her law firm, she would be entering a narrative he has already shaped. If she pursues legal action, she will be doing so against someone who has carefully avoided making clear, actionable admissions and who has made her out to be an opportunist backed by an also unnamed gold-digging law firm.

And if she remains silent, his version — however incomplete — may become the only widely visible account. He did not mention her name, therefore her reputation, if she does not proceed, will remain intact. But suing would immediately create public ignominy and may well render her unemployable.

That is not how accountability usually works. It is how narrative control works.

Now compare that to Alomar:

• He did not control the timing.
• He did not control the forum.
• He did not control the outcome.

The league investigated. The league decided. The league imposed consequences that altered his professional and personal life.

Ackman operates in a fundamentally different environment — one where power, wealth and communication platforms allow an individual not just to respond to events, but to preempt them.

And that leads to the central point: this strategy — saying enough to acknowledge a problem while carefully avoiding legally actionable detail — likely reduces the chances of a public legal dispute. It makes it harder for a claim to crystallize into a clear, provable case. It also makes it unlikely that the accuser will ever be heard on equal footing in the public arena.

That doesn’t mean the underlying allegations, whatever they may be, are true or false. It means the structure of the exchange makes truth harder to test.

And that is where the comparison with Alomar, where the truth will also never be known, becomes instructive.

In one case, an institution imposed consequences without a court process.

In the other, an individual may be able to avoid that process altogether.

Both scenarios bypass the traditional mechanisms by which facts are tested and responsibility is determined. They arrive at outcomes — very different outcomes — without the same procedural scrutiny.

For decades, the concern was that powerful individuals could avoid accountability. That concern remains valid. But what these two situations reveal is something more complex: the system no longer operates in a single direction.

Sometimes institutions act first and adjudicate later. Sometimes individuals act first and prevent adjudication from happening at all.

Neither model is satisfying.

A system that imposes consequences without process risks unfairness. A system that allows narrative control to preempt process risks something else entirely — the quiet disappearance of accountability.

If the practical result in both cases is that the underlying facts are never fully tested, then the distinction between accusation, defence and proof begins to erode.

And once that happens, outcomes are no longer determined by what can be established, but by who controls the process — or avoids it altogether.

Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, employment and labour lawyers with offices in Ontario and Alberta, and British Columbia. He practices employment law in eight provinces and is the author of six books, including the Law of Dismissal in Canada.