Anaheim Says Potential Revenues Justify Expense : Angels Suit Costs City $5.3 Million

The City of Anaheim revealed Tuesday that its battle against the California Angels baseball team has cost the city nearly $5.3 million to date.

After meeting in closed session, the City Council disclosed the figure of $5,295,326.78 because attorneys for the city have concluded their defense in a $100-million lawsuit brought by the Angels against the city, city spokeswoman Sheri Erlewine said.

There is “no reason to not make public the amount of money spent,” Erlewine said.

In the past, city officials have refused to release the figures, saying that they feared it would reveal strategic information to Angels lawyers.

The Angels sued Anaheim and Anaheim Stadium Associates, arguing that the city violated its lease with the Angels when it offered the Los Angeles Rams part of the stadium parking lot for development. Anaheim Stadium Associates is a joint partnership between the heirs of the late Rams owner and a development company. The city’s offer of 68 acres of the stadium parking lot was part of a deal that lured the Rams to Orange County.

The Angels have argued that the proposed development of high-rise office towers and parking structures will drive away fans and hurt attendance.

On Tuesday, Erlewine reiterated some of the benefits the city has said the development will bring to Anaheim. She said the project is expected to create 250 temporary jobs and 8,000 permanent jobs, add $2 million annually in tax and land-lease payments to city coffers and generate another $2 million for school districts and other taxing agencies.

“This development will provide a commercial anchor for north Orange County, which we think will result in this area becoming the next Century City-type of development in Southern California,” Erlewine said.

“It’s a $5-million-plus expense, but because of all these things, it’s a project worth fighting for,” Erlewine said.

Robert Payton, a spokesman for the Angels, criticized the city for withholding until now its costs in the lawsuit.

“There was never a reason to withhold that information,” Payton said. “And frankly, it’s an outstanding amount of money to have spent to assert the right to build high-rise office buildings and parking structures on the Anaheim Stadium parking lot when they know full well that the citizens of Anaheim and the Angels fans are dead set against that.”

Payton, who was reached at home Tuesday evening, could not say how much the Angels have spent thus far on the case. Attorneys for both the Angels and Anaheim Stadium Associates have said in the past that their clients’ cost figured in the millions. Payton on Tuesday said the cost of litigation to the Angels has been several million dollars lower than Anaheim’s cost.

Of the $5,295,326.78 figure, the city spent $4,624,804.34 to defend itself against the main lawsuit, which involves the dispute over who owns the parking lot: the city or the Angels. Another $621,571.33 was spent on ancillary lawsuits, most of which recently were settled out of court.

To date, $48,951.07 has been spent on another lawsuit filed by the Angels against City Manager William O. Talley, whom the Angels accuse of using “fraud and deceit” in trying to deprive the ballclub of its parking lot rights.

On two other occasions the city has disclosed its cost in the Angels litigation. The first was on Oct. 23, 1985, when officials said Anaheim spent $307,694 before settling one of the peripheral lawsuits. The second was last April 22, when Anaheim disclosed that it had spent about $3.1 million to date. At the time, the city’s attorneys announced the expenses to explain why they would not seek a mistrial when a possible conflict-of-interest question arose.