The Law--A Flying Sledge

Many years ago when I was a kid, I saw this old Warren William movie, I think it was called “Attorney-at-Law” or “The Mouthpiece.”

In it, William played a defense attorney with a client accused of poisoning someone, probably a husband or wife, I’ve forgotten.

What I remember is the dramatic climax to the trial in which William picks up the vial that the state has identified as containing deadly poison and he raises it to his lips and drains it in a gulp. Then, he stands and faces the jury, alive and apparently unharmed.

The jury stampedes out and returns in minutes with a verdict of acquittal. William’s assistant approaches him, awe-struck. “That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen done,” he gasps. Whereupon William turns on him savagely, and hisses, “Get me out of here and get me to a stomach pump, you idiot.”

Warren William was a hero in my old neighborhood. The guys thought it was great stuff, funny even.

So it was, I guess. It was also disturbing. Because, the bottom line was, he had sprung a murderer. He had subverted the law, thwarted justice.

No one cared, of course. It was just a movie. But, it was also my first inkling that the law had very little to do with justice and a great deal to do with the adroit manipulation of it.

Years later, sitting in courtrooms for a living, I became struck anew at how hard it was to get real evidence into a hearing, how easy to cover the truth with debris.

The law was no match for lawyers. The law seemed to mean to them what a word meant to Humpty Dumpty in “Alice In Wonderland.” “Just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.”

The law was an abstract, like the horizon. It was as brittle as a chorus girl’s smile and quite at the mercy of any one of the patchwork of intricate ploys that have been written into it over the years. Warren William wouldn’t have had to swallow poison today. He could have proved it was illegally obtained and had it thrown out as evidence.

So, I am not surprised at the bewildering state of affairs pro football finds itself enmeshed in in the labyrinth of American jurisprudence these days. It would seem to me they are as lost as Alice on the other side of the looking glass.

In the first place, a fledgling league, the USFL, which came into being with the most terrible idea you ever heard of--summer football (Arizona in July!)--finds itself on its own two-yard line, out of timeouts, two minutes to play and behind by two touchdowns.

What does it do? Call in the lawyers. Find somebody to blame. It’s an American tradition. Find the guy with the deepest pockets. And sue him.

In this case, it was the National Football League.

Now, a lot of us thought that good old American gamesmanship applied in dictating whether a new league would be successful--but this was before lawyers started swallowing poison in court.

But, it is some of the “law” emanating from that courtroom that makes you want to bang yourself on the side of the head to make sure you are hearing right.

For instance, what is Howard Cosell doing as an expert witness in the matter? Now, I find Howard as endlessly entertaining as the next guy and miss him on “Monday Night Football” but, the last time I looked, he was a fellow writer in the sports column dodge, and what his hearsay has to do with the USFL’s case against the NFL, God knows.

But even that may be more explainable than the latest caper of our judiciary in the matter of the anti-trust suit of the L.A. Raiders and L.A. Coliseum against the NFL.

You may remember the Raiders were awarded $34.5 million and the Coliseum $14.8 million in punitive damages because the league had violated anti-trust laws in blocking the move of the team from Oakland.

The appeals court now finds that the amount awarded to the Raiders may be excessive. They are sending it back to be trimmed.

They let stand the award to the Coliseum. There could be no gain in saying they had been severely damaged by a league that first permitted the Rams to move out, darkening the arena and crippling its ability to make bond payments--and then refused to let a new tenant move in.

Their reasoning in the case of the Raiders is the last bit convoluted.

Their point seems to be that the NFL, by virtue of the Raiders’ move to Los Angeles, lost an opportunity to put an expansion franchise in Los Angeles and had to settle for the opportunity to put one in Oakland. The court finds that, in that case, there would have been “excess value” of the L.A. opportunity over an Oakland one.

That’s interesting. Because the league had no discernible plans for locating an expansion franchise in Los Angeles in the first place. That’s precisely why the Coliseum sued. The league took the position Los Angeles already had a franchise--the Rams.

What is also curious is the court’s interpretation that an expansion franchise in Los Angeles would carry a different price tag from one in Oakland.

Historically, that has not been so. In 1968, Atlanta and New Orleans came in at exactly the same figure--$8.5 million. In 1976, Tampa and Seattle were admitted to the league at $16 million apiece.

The court seems to feel that, had the league permitted the Raiders to move unopposed in 1980, the Raiders might have “been required to compensate the NFL for the excess value of the Los Angeles opportunity” versus the Oakland opportunity.

Now, that’s really fascinating. That presupposes the league is left with not one but two New York opportunities now that it has let the Giants and the Jets move to New Jersey.

Does that mean that, if the league puts an expansion club in the New York ballparks, they would have to compensate the Giants and Jets for the excess value of a New York opportunity over a Hackensack opportunity?

Or did the league forfeit the New York opportunity when it allowed the Giants and Jets to move just as it forfeited the L.A. opportunity when it let the Rams move?

Will someone please swallow some poison? Or get Lewis Carroll to cover the proceedings?