The Gun Sounds in Raider Battle--They’re Staying

The Raiders will not have to return to Oakland.

A six-year struggle over the National Football League team’s move to Los Angeles finally ended Monday for the City of Oakland when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider its lawsuit to force the team’s return to the East Bay.

“It’s all over,” a jubilant Joseph Alioto, the Raiders’ lawyer, exclaimed by telephone from San Francisco. “It’s a great day for Los Angeles. It’s a great day for the Constitution. . . . The comedy is over.”

In letting Oakland’s suit die, the Supreme Court declined to consider the city’s novel legal theory that the power of eminent domain, which allows governments to take over private property for public use, applies to a professional football team.

Alioto and the Raiders declined the role of gracious winners. In fact, the club is planning more legal scrimmages against the City of Oakland and the National Football League over legal costs and damage claims, totaling about $25 million.

“The illegal conspiracy on eminent domain by Pete Rozelle (NFL commissioner) and the City of Oakland is finally broken,” the Raiders said in a prepared statement.

“The City of Oakland and the National Football League are now clearly responsible for damages and attorneys fees resulting from persecution, harassment and illegal efforts to force the Raiders out of football.

“We have won in court. We have won in Congress, but the insidious reach of Pete Rozelle still continues in every direction to maintain this illegal conspiracy.”

Dick Maxwell, a NFL spokesman in New York, said the league had no formal comment, because the NFL had not been involved in the lawsuit between Oakland and the Raiders.

The City of Oakland offered no official comment, but one attorney active in its efforts to force the Raiders’ return conceded that the city had lost.

“It means that the eminent domain action is over,” attorney David Self said. “It was a long and well-fought battle, but we lost.”

William Robertson, president of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, saw Monday’s decision as “complete vindication” of the commission’s efforts to bring the Raiders to the Coliseum, forsaken when the Los Angeles Rams moved to Anaheim in 1978.

The Raider-Oakland-NFL battle began in 1980 when Al Davis, operating general partner of the Raiders, sought to move the football team to Los Angeles but was blocked in court by the NFL. Oakland then filed its eminent domain suit in state court.

In another legal contest, the Coliseum Commission pressed an antitrust action against the NFL in federal court in 1978. The Raiders joined in the suit in 1980.

When the district court found that the NFL had violated antitrust laws by requiring the approval of three-fourths of all NFL club owners before the Raiders could move, the Coliseum Commission and the team were awarded damages from the NFL.

The federal court in Los Angeles awarded the Raiders $11.5 million and the Coliseum Commission $4.86 million for lost profits from 1980 to 1982, the period during which league action had blocked the football team’s move. Under antitrust law, damages are tripled.

After considering an NFL appeal from the damage awards, a three-judge panel of the U.S 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an award of $14.58 million to the Coliseum Commission last month and remanded the $34.6-million Raider award to district court here for further proceedings.

In ruling, the appeals judges directed the lower court to reconsider the Raiders’ award in light of two key elements: The award to the Raiders must be reduced by the size of the club’s “windfall” profits 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.

Speaking for the Raiders Monday, attorney Alioto insisted that there are no windfall profits to subtract from the Raiders’ award, which has ballooned to about $40 million because of interest due.

Over the years, Alioto said, the NFL has priced new franchises at identical amounts when they were sold at about the same time. Thus, according to the San Francisco-based attorney, there is no windfall to the Raiders.

“We expect this court, or certainly the trial court, will find it’s zero and the Raiders will get their full $40 million,” he said.

Alioto also said the Raiders will return to Superior Court in Salinas, Calif., where Oakland’s eminent domain claim was first rejected, to seek recovery of legal costs and further damages against Oakland and the NFL.