Pete Rose. Photo: Shutterstock

The defamation lawsuit Pete Rose filed alleging attorney John Dowd defamed him by saying the baseball star committed statutory rape has been dismissed.

U.S. District Judge Petrese Tucker of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania issued an order Friday dismissing the case Rose v. Dowd, which stemmed from comments Dowd made during a 2015 radio interview. Dowd, who is now a member of President Donald Trump's legal team, investigated Rose for sports betting in the 1980s while acting as special counsel to Major League Baseball.

Dowd's attorney said in a prepared statement that the dismissal was based on “mutual consideration.”

“Pete Rose and John Dowd have agreed based on mutual consideration to the dismissal with prejudice of Mr. Rose's lawsuit,” David Tobin of Tobin O'Connor Ewing in Washington, D.C., said, adding that he was “not permitted to comment further regarding their resolution of the matter.”

Rose's attorney, Martin Garbus of Eaton & Van Winkle in New York, did not return a call for comment.

The crux of Rose's claims stem from West Chester-based radio broadcaster Bill Werndl's July 2015 interview with Dowd. According to court documents, Dowd said, “Michael Bertolini, you know, told us that he not only ran bets but he ran young girls for him down at spring training, ages 12 to 14. Isn't that lovely. So that's statutory rape every time you do that.”

Dowd had interviewed Bertolini as part of his investigation in 1989.

A little more than a year before that interview took place, Rose had agreed to do an ad campaign with Sketchers that was set to expire in December 2015. Rose contended that the campaign, which included a commercial that aired during the 2015 Super Bowl, was successful, but Skechers decided not to extend the contract—a move Rose said cost him at least $250,000.

Dowd sought to have the claims dismissed and also sought to have the court apply Nevada law regarding the defamation claims. Although Tucker determined that Pennsylvania and Nevada defamation laws are substantially the same, and said the law of Pennsylvania, the forum state, should apply, she also trimmed several claims from Rose's lawsuit in July.

A motion Dowd filed in August, however, brought to light allegations from an alleged victim who said she had sex with Rose while under the age of 16.

The filing significantly shifted the focus of the litigation, and left some defamation attorneys wondering whether Rose should have filed the case at all.

“If there's stuff like that out there, you have to question if you want to step up to the batter's box,” defamation lawyer George Bochetto of Bochetto & Lentz told The Legal after the allegation was made.

As a baseball player with the Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies, among other MLB teams, Rose set the record for most base hits in a career with 4,256. He is one of only two major leaguers to amass more than 4,000 hits.