NFL May Not Owe Raiders Single Penny, Court Rules

The National Football League owes the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission $14.58 million, but may not have to pay Al Davis’ Raiders football team a penny, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

In the latest decision in the six-year legal battle over Davis’ NFL team, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court jury decision awarding the commission $14.58 million for damages suffered when, jurors found, the league violated antitrust rules.

However, the three-judge appeals court, sitting in San Francisco, rejected the Los Angeles jury’s $34.6 million award to Davis’ team.

The panel vacated that part of the award to Davis that was based on NFL antitrust violations and remanded it to District Court here for further proceedings.

The appeals court panel ruled that the lower court, in reconsidering how much money Davis gets, must weigh two key elements: The award to the Raiders must be reduced by the size of the Raiders’ “windfall” profit acquired by moving from Oakland to Los Angeles, minus the value the league got by obtaining Oakland as a site for a potential expansion team.

The panel said that consideration of those elements may leave Davis with nothing or next to nothing but that “even assuming that their (the jurors’) award of monetary damages will be wholly offset, there is nothing necessarily wrong with a damage assessment producing no net recovery.”

The appellate judges also reversed the lower court’s findings that the league had failed to act in good faith and failed to deal fairly with Davis. Instead, the panel ruled, both the NFL and the Raiders’ owner failed to act in good faith. Both sides had committed “offsetting penalties,” said the panel, borrowing from football terminology.

The case began in 1980 when Davis’ initial attempt to move the Raiders to Los Angeles was blocked in court by the NFL. He succeeded two years later. Oakland tried to regain the team by acquiring it through the power of eminent domain, but state courts have ruled against that attempt. Oakland is appealing that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The move to Los Angeles was made possible by a federal court decision that the NFL had violated federal antitrust laws by requiring the Raiders to seek three-fourths approval from other club owners to move into the territory of another team, the Los Angeles Rams, who had recently moved 40 miles from Los Angeles to Anaheim.

The federal court jury awarded the Raiders $11.55 million and the Coliseum $4.86 million from the NFL for lost profits from 1980 to 1982--the years in which NFL legal action blocked the move south. The amounts were tripled under antitrust law.

Davis, asked about the appeals court decision Monday while in New York waiting to testify in the United States Football League’s antitrust suit against the NFL, said: “Obviously, I don’t feel good; I would have liked to have won . . . the thing, but that’s part of life.”

Three Raider Options

Davis’ lawyer, San Francisco attorney Joseph L. Alioto, said the Raiders now have three options--ask the full U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the question , ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule the panel, or to go back to federal district court in Los Angeles to fight for damages. He said a decision will be made soon on which option to pursue.

Officials for the NFL claimed a victory over Davis, the Raiders’ managing partner, after they learned of the appeal panel’s decision.

League spokesman Joe Browne told reporters in New York that “Commissioner (Pete) Rozelle and 27 owners are vindicated as far as the Raiders claim that the NFL acted in bad faith.”

An NFL attorney, Jim Noel, said the panel’s ruling may give the NFL the opening it needs to argue both liability and damages before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had refused to hear an NFL appeal of the case based solely on liability.

‘Like Catching Lightning’

Coliseum Commission President William Robertson told a press conference here that he thinks that the NFL’s chances of winning before the Supreme Court are “like catching lightning in a bottle.”

He called the decision “a great victory” and said the commission can afford to wait through future NFL appeals for its $14.58 million share of the award; the NFL will have to pay 10% interest in the interim.

Robertson said he would be inclined to spend the damage award, when it is paid, to “make the stadium conducive to football--better viewing, better seating, better security.”

Michael Seiler reported from Los Angeles; Randy Harvey reported from New York.