Wade Boggs Settles With Ex-Mistress

Boston Red Sox baseball star Wade Boggs settled a palimony lawsuit with his former mistress Margo Adams in an Orange County Superior Court judge’s chambers Monday, then both agreed to a gag order prohibiting them and their attorneys from discussing the details.

The settlement was announced Monday by Adams’ and Boggs’ attorneys and confirmed by Orange County Superior Court Judge James Gray, who presided at the closed-door conference.

Adams, a former Miss Stanton, sued Boggs in June, 1988, for $6 million, alleging fraud and emotional distress, and that he reneged on an oral contract. Adams also asked to be compensated for wages she lost when accompanying Boggs on 64 Red Sox road trips over four seasons.

“The parties are restrained from any communication regarding each other, this lawsuit, or any other aspect of their relationship together,” said a statement jointly released by their attorneys.

Neither Boggs, 31, who will be paid $1.9 million in the coming season, nor Adams, 33, a Costa Mesa mortgage broker, could be reached for comment Monday. Their attorneys did not return telephone calls.

“The press is to know nothing,” said Adams’ friend Carol Morales, a Sausalito advertising executive who spoke with Adams after the settlement was reached. “She is just glad it’s over with.”

Morales said Adams told her she is glad the lawsuit is behind her and is not disappointed with the outcome.

“I just think they don’t want anybody to know the dollar amount,” Morales said. “I’m sure she’s satisfied with the outcome.”

Adams reportedly earned $500,000 for posing nude and granting interviews about her relationship with Boggs to Penthouse

magazine. She also appeared on numerous radio and television talk shows.

Last March, when it was learned that Boggs had offered to settle the case for $20,000, his attorney said the Red Sox third baseman was pressured by the team into making the offer. At that time, Boggs insisted that as a condition of the settlement Adams would have to stop talking publicly about the suit.

Boggs’ attorney, Jennifer J. King, previously has said that Boggs agreed to negotiate a settlement to “relieve pressures” on his teammates, many of whom faced the possibility of testifying if the matter went to trial.

In a deposition, Boggs described the final stages of his relationship with Adams as “like a volcano waiting to erupt.”

Gray said that as part of the settlement both sides agreed to the gag order, barring them from discussing the case publicly. Gray also sealed the transcript of Monday’s session, he said.

“As Yogi Berra would say, ‘It ain’t over till it’s over,’ and now it’s over,” Gray said.

Morales said Adams told her she will “have a very merry Christmas and she hopes the same for the Boggs family.

“She isn’t going to be home for a couple of weeks,” Morales said. “She’s staying with a friend in California.

“It’s settled, it’s done, it’s over with, life goes on,” Morales said. “That’s her feeling.”

The settlement conference was the last stop for the case before trial, Judge Gray said.

“Had I not been able to settle the case I would have set it for trial,” he said.

Some portions of Adams’ suit were thrown out in earlier court actions.

Adams alleged that her career as a mortgage broker was essentially ruined because she spent all her time traveling around the country as Boggs’ personal assistant.

According to her lawsuit, Adams met Boggs in April, 1984, and in November of that year entered into a contract, agreeing to accompany him on his travels and act as his personal assistant in exchange for about $2,000 a month. She did this from 1984 to 1988, she said.

Adams accompanied Boggs to social functions, did his laundry and sewing, arranged his schedule and coordinated a lucrative sideline business in which he sold his autographs to collectors, she alleged.

In a deposition given in the case, Boggs said his feeling about Adams during their four-year relationship was “totally different the last two years than the first two years.”

He adamantly denied, however, that he paid Adams $2,000 a month in cash or had agreed to compensate her more fully later for lost income, as she claimed.

“I wouldn’t stand for that,” Boggs said in a deposition. “I felt that that’s paying for her to be a mistress. I felt that reimbursing her on her plane flights and whatever expenses she incurred in the city that she was at was sufficient enough.”