Angel-Anaheim Tilt Is All Show in First Inning

The trial of Golden West Baseball Co. versus Anaheim, which opened Monday, promises to be a star wars of the sports world, studded with appearances by such notables as Peter V. Ueberroth, Buzzie Bavasi and Gene Autry.

But it began as an audio-visual war as attorneys in the two-year-long legal dispute between the California Angels and the city they call home spent the first day setting up, tearing down and referring to a sophisticated array of props during opening statements in Orange County Superior Court.

Backed by maps, aerial photographs and a slide show, Angels’ attorney William Campbell charged that Anaheim officials consciously violated their contract with the Angels when they wooed the Los Angeles Rams to Anaheim Stadium in 1978.

Anaheim had to promise the Rams the development rights to the stadium parking lot to get the football club to move to Orange County, Campbell said. That promise was made without the knowledge or the consent of the Angels, he said.

But Anaheim’s attorney Michael Rubin disagreed. Pointing to a seven-foot, free-standing blueprint of the stadium, Rubin said it was impossible for Angels’ officials not to have known about a deal that was “one of the most publicized events in 1978 in Orange County.”

Golden West Baseball Co., which owns the Angels, filed its $100-million lawsuit against Anaheim on Aug. 8, 1983--19 years to the day after the team had signed a contract to make the city its home. The suit, which is being heard by Judge Frank Domenichini, was filed to halt development of the stadium parking lot.

The Angels contend that the suit is about parking spaces, the ones that will be lost if the development occurs. The city says it’s about hurt feelings and sharing the profits of development. Either way, at the heart of the dispute are the promises made to get, first the California Angels, then the Los Angeles Rams to move to Anaheim.

“The case begins and ends with the lease entered into in August, 1964,” Campbell told Domenichini on Monday. “By that agreement, the Angels leased . . . Anaheim Stadium and the parking lot around it for a period of 35 years, with the ability to extend the lease by three 10-year periods.”

Trust for Rosenbloom Kin

As a portion of the Angels’ 1964 lease was flashed on a screen propped up in the jury box of Department 36, Campbell read the text to prove his point: “No reduction or diminution in any of the facilities, equipment or improvements furnished by (Anaheim) . . . shall be made during the continuance of this lease agreement without the advance written consent of the (Angels).”

But in 1978, the city leased 68 acres of the lot to Anaheim Stadium Associates, a partnership of the Boston-based development firm Cabot, Cabot & Forbes and Ramco, a trust for the heirs of the late Rams’ owner Carroll Rosenbloom.

The partnership plans to build a $200-million complex of four office towers and four multilevel parking structures on 20 acres of the parking lot. Plans for the additional 48 acres have yet to be proposed.

“It doesn’t take a real estate expert, a lawyer, it doesn’t take much common sense to see there’s a problem,” Campbell said. “How could this (the city’s agreement with the Rams) be done? There is no good answer, and the city and ASA are going to spend the rest of the trial looking for one.

“I’ll tell you how it happened,” he said. “Arrogance and greed.” As a result, the Angels stand to lose precious surface parking spaces for the team’s fans, he said, and such a loss will cripple the baseball club’s ability to make a living, Campbell said.

But Rubin argued that the Angels will have more surface parking once the development is completed than the team had when the lawsuit was filed in 1983. Although he was not able to finish his opening statement on Monday, Rubin said that two of the main questions to be answered in the trial are, “Will Golden West Baseball Co. really be inescapably harmed? Will the fans be inconvenienced?”

“No,” Rubin answered. “The fans will not be inconvenienced. In fact, the parking and the ingress and egress to the lot surprisingly enough will be better” after the development is completed.

When the Angels pitched the first baseball in Anaheim in 1966, the parking lot had 12,401 spaces. When the suit was filed, there were 14,168. And the city plans a complete reconfiguration of the lot during development to further increase the number of surface parking spaces, Rubin said.

“The city itself is jealous of this parking lot,” he told Domenichini. “It would not allow something to be built on the lot that would ruin it.”

But Angels’ owner Gene Autry, who sat in the audience in a blue pin-striped Western suit and black ostrich-skin cowboy boots, said after the court recessed that he had never heard of such a plan. Autry is expected to be called shortly as a witness in the trial.

Opening statements will continue today. The trial is expected to take up to three months.