Settlement Remains Elusive in Angels’ Suit With Anaheim

The banner, surrounded by pink and white balloons, read “Back Together Again.” So did the buttons that were passed out to the crowd in the Anaheim Stadium banquet room.

California Angels owner Gene Autry was the first to get his button. Don R. Roth, then the mayor of Anaheim, made sure of that. He pinned it on Autry himself.

In retrospect, said Michael Schreter, the vice president of Golden West Baseball Co., the Angels’ parent company, “The only thing missing from all that hoopla was Barbra Streisand singing, ‘Memorieeeeeeees.’ ”

The party, almost three months ago, was in celebration of the dismissal of most of the lawsuits and counterclaims the City of Anaheim and the California Angels had filed against each other. It was touted by officials--mostly from Anaheim--as the springboard for a settlement of a larger lawsuit at the core of the controversy, known as “the big one.”

But the settlement never came.

Now, the courtroom phase of the “big one” is nearing an end. After almost a year of testimony and other evidence, the attorneys closed their briefcases Friday and will return Dec. 8 only for some last-minute rulings on motions.

Yet after the presentation of about 1,500 evidentiary exhibits and a series of hearings that requires almost 20,000 pages of transcripts to chronicle, the litigants are no closer today to concluding their costly dispute than when it all began.

Now the question is: Can the Angels, the City of Anaheim and Anaheim Stadium Associates, a partnership between the Boston-based development firm of Cabot, Cabot & Forbes and the interests of the Los Angeles Rams, settle the dispute over who has what rights to the Anaheim Stadium parking lot before Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank D. Domenichi renders his decision next summer? And if so, what will it take from each side?

The dispute centers on the development rights to areas of the Anaheim Stadium parking lot granted by the city to Anaheim Stadium Associates as part of the package that lured the Rams to Anaheim in 1978. The Angels say the city granted those development rights to the Rams in violation of their stadium lease with the city.

The Angels’ $100-million lawsuit, filed Aug. 8, 1983, blocked high-rise development on part of the stadium parking lot. The case has cost each of the litigants millions of dollars--more than $5 million for Anaheim and about $4 million each for the two other sides--and has divided a city, possibly cost one councilman his job, and propelled the Angels and the Rams more heavily into local politics.

All the parties agree they would like to settle the case. But while representatives for the city and Anaheim Stadium Associates say negotiation is a must, not a maybe, representatives for the Angels say it’s too late.

“The time of discussion has come and gone,” Schreter said. “Everybody would like to see a settlement. But there is no settlement discussion, and there is no possibility in my estimate of a settlement at this time or before the judge comes out with a final ruling.”

But without a settlement, “we are doomed to litigate this forever,” said Alfred E. Augustini, an attorney for the development firm and the Rams.

The attorneys have said that no matter who wins, the losing side plans to appeal.

All sides said last week that they have come close to settling the lawsuit in the past, and each blames the other for pulling out or turning down various offers.

Offer Disputed

In March, 1984, the city offered Autry $4 million over a four-year period to drop the lawsuit, said City Manager William O. Talley.

Schreter, with Autry sitting in the same office, accepted the city’s offer during a March 1984 telephone conference call with Talley and former Councilman E. Llewellyn Overholt Jr., Talley said last week. But a week later Schreter called back to say “Mr. Autry changed his mind,” Talley said.

But Schreter, saying there never was a $4 million offer, called it “absolute, total fabrication.”

“That’s just another untrue story. There is no validity to that whatsoever,” Schreter said.

Attorneys for the city and Anaheim Stadium Associates said last week that any settlement may hinge on the second part of the ASA development project.

Two-Phased Proposal

One phase of the multimillion-dollar proposal consists of four office towers and four parking structures on 20 acres of the stadium parking lot facing Orangewood Avenue. But what would be included in the second part of the project--on 48 acres of the parking lot facing State College Boulevard--has yet to be announced.

Even before the lawsuit was filed, the Angels said they would not discuss settlement or consider agreeing to the Orangewood Avenue project unless the city either killed the State College Boulevard phase or gave the Angels ultimate veto power over details of that part of the project, Talley said.

“I really think that the Angels’ concern regarding Orangewood can be satisfied,” said William W. Wynder,an attorney for the city. “There are some traffic and other mitigation measures they would like to see implemented that ASA and the city would not have a hard time about. The Angels’ concern is what is going to happen with State College. That’s the real impediment. That to me is where the real nut has to be cracked.”

Don Morrow, an attorney for the Angels, denied that the Angels may ease resistance to the Orangewood development plan if they can win concessions on the State College project. “The way they’ve (the city and ASA) tried the case, they don’t care about State College,” Morrow said. “They lost on that. So the best they can hope for is to do the Orangewood development. But Mr. Autry doesn’t want, honest to goodness, any development on that parking lot.

“When you lease something, you have an interest in it. If you lease a two-bedroom apartment, your landlord can’t all of a sudden decide to take away one of the bedrooms.”

But Wynder disagrees.

“There’s nothing magic about flat parking. Think about that . . . does that strike you as a reasonable proposition? If you have to park in a parking structure, you won’t go to a baseball game?. . . I’m sorry, I just don’t believe that.”

‘Battle for Fans’

Said Morrow: “Mr. Autry is really serious. He really thinks that a development on the parking lot will not work. He doesn’t need the money. Why would he settle? He’s a man of high principles. He’s fighting a battle for the fans.”

Augustini said his client within the past month offered Autry a “very small” interest--”more of a token”--in the State College Boulevard project but the offer was emphatically turned down.

“We thought he might feel less insecure about State College if he had an interest in it,” said Augustini, who declined to say what that interest was. “They said they were not interested in a piece of the action--’so don’t bother dangling that in front of us.’ ”

According to Augustini, Autry has “boxed” himself in with his repeated public statements that the Angels are fighting the City of Anaheim, the Rams and the developer, only because the ballclub cares about not inconveniencing fans with high-rise parking garages on the stadium lot.

Augustini, who has argued along with city officials that Autry filed the lawsuit because he was not cut in on the development deal, called the notion that fan inconvenience is the only real issue “a tough one to swallow.” Nonetheless, he said, now “we all sort of have to pretend that it’s probably true. (Because) his principal interest now is what his public statements have been.

‘Doomed to Litigate’

“Now, I think they just have a mess. I think they started wanting to have a position like the Rams. As a result of litigation, he was forced to say he didn’t want that. He wants the parking lot. Now, they’re stuck. We are doomed to litigate this forever unless Autry backs off a little.”

Augustini said he wants to concentrate on working with Schreter to alleviate concerns about the proposed parking garages.

Augustini last week criticized City Manager Talley, the principal negotiator for Anaheim in the litigation, for what he called a “tough guy” approach with Autry, a 79-year-old millionaire once known as the “Singing Cowboy” who made 93 movies and recorded about 10 gold records, five of which went on to become platinum records with sales topping 1 million.

“Playing tough guy is not the way to deal with Mr. Autry, a person used to being paid respect to and listened to,” Augustini said. “He’s a little spoiled in that way. You don’t put vinegar out for a person like that. You need a little honey.”

Talley said he did not deal with Autry when the deal with the Rams was negotiated. He said he spoke with Red Patterson and Buzzie Bavasi, who were then the ballclub’s top officials.

“If it offended Mr. Autry, we offer an apology,” Talley said. “But we did what they asked us to do.” Talley said no one from the Angels organization ever said Autry was the only one to be contacted about projects affecting the stadium.

Cautious Stance

Michael D. Rubin, an attorney for the city, said the third major party in the litigation, Anaheim Stadium Associates, seems to be taking a cautious stance for the moment. That, he said, is because they have “seen a political situation during the last two months which has not been constant. And they’re waiting for things to sift into place so that they know who the players are and they can make better judgments based upon the knowledge they have some permanency in exactly who is making the decisions in the city.”

Rubin was referring to the Nov. 4 election, in which Overholt was replaced on the City Council by newcomer Fred Hunter and Roth was elected to the county Board of Supervisors. When Roth takes his new post in January, the council will either have to agree on an appointed replacement or hold a special election for mayor.

Hunter’s council candidacy was backed by both the Angels and the Rams, and he ran on a platform that placed settlement of the Angels-Anaheim lawsuit high on a list of priorities.

Even with new faces in City Hall and the end of the trial, which gave each side a look at the weaknesses and strengths of each other’s cases, all the attorneys involved acknowledged that settling the suit will be difficult if not impossible.

“The fact that people have gone through this cement mixer of litigation is pretty good evidence of the difficulty of settlement,” Augustini said. “There’s no doubt in my mind the case should have been settled a long time ago.”