Courts Frequently Play Referee in Sports World

Although the relationship between Anaheim and its sports teams is especially heated, such contract disputes are not uncommon in the world of professional athletics, where team owners can be as accustomed to the civil courtroom as they are to the playing field, sports officials say.

Perhaps the most notable legal battle in recent sports history involved the Oakland Raiders’ move to Southern California. The move sparked antitrust and eminent domain suits involving the National Football League, the Raiders and the cities of Oakland and Los Angeles, and kept Raider owner Al Davis in court on and off for several years.

“Things like this flare up periodically,” said Jim Noel, assistant counsel for the National Football League. “Any time there are parties that are ‘lessor’ and ‘lessee’ there is the chance for dispute.

“And there is more chance for dispute when there is more than one tenant in the park,” Noel said, “ . . . especially if there are different lease terms for the baseball team than for the football team.”

Stadiums are shared by multiple teams in at least a dozen American cities, according to an official with the baseball commissioner’s office. For example, San Francisco’s drafty Candlestick Park is home to the Giants and the 49ers; Seattle’s Kingdome houses the Seahawks and the Mariners. The Astros and the Oilers share the Houston Astrodome, and the Pirates and the Steelers play in Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium.

The baseball official, who requested that his name not be used, said that there are similarities between the fracas in Anaheim and a recent dispute over the Kingdome. “There are lease problems from time to time in all sports, and it may touch upon the use (of a stadium) by other teams,” the official said.

The Seattle Mariners baseball team filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in August, 1984, against King County, over a scheduling conflict with the Seahawks football team. The lawsuit was resolved when a new lease agreement between the Mariners and the Kingdome was signed on Oct. 24 of this year, said Bob Porter, Mariners spokesman.

Conflicts among the baseball team, the Kingdome and the county led the team to consider leaving Seattle. Because of the new lease agreement, the team will stay, Porter said.

“This was really the first time that it came out that football was getting scheduling priority over baseball,” Porter said. “In every other multi-use situation, baseball has priority over football, because of the number of dates involved and the time of year the schedule is set. There was certainly a concern over baseball teams, when it appeared that we had lost our scheduling priority because of the precedent it might set.”

Arthur E. (Red) Patterson, a top Angels official who resigned in April in part because of the ongoing legal imbroglio, contends that “trouble with landlords has been prevalent in professional baseball.”

Back with the ball club since August, in a new role as consultant for community and public relations, Patterson blamed the cities with which the teams deal for such troubles.

“It’s not a forever honeymoon,” Patterson said. “Things look great when you move in. Then the landlord starts to get greedy and stubborn.”

Times staff writer Roxana Kopetman contributed to this story.