Rozelle Goes to Sideline in Hearing on Klein Award

NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle will not have to testify after all in the legal showdown between Los Angeles Raiders managing general partner Al Davis and former San Diego Chargers owner Eugene Klein, a Superior Court judge ruled Monday.

With 500 reporters looking on, a process server representing Davis’ lawyers had handed Rozelle a subpoena Friday during the commissioner’s annual pre-Super Bowl press conference at an Anaheim hotel.

But on Monday, in the near-deserted confines of a San Diego courtroom, Judge Gilbert Harelson quashed the subpoena after one of Davis’ attorneys said the attempt to compel Rozelle’s testimony was one big misunderstanding.

A jury last month awarded Klein $5 million in a suit alleging that Davis maliciously singled him out as a defendant in the Raiders’ landmark anti-trust case against the National Football League. Klein suffered a heart attack on the witness stand while testifying in the 1982 case.

The same jurors will return to court today to decide whether Klein should get an additional sum in punitive damages to deter Davis from similar conduct in the future.

After working feverishly over the weekend to spew out an inch-thick legal document, attorneys for the NFL appeared before Harelson Monday to argue that Rozelle and Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Hugh Culverhouse, who also was subpoenaed, could not be compelled to testify because they were not California residents.

Attorney David Monahan also contended that Davis’ lawyers had no right to seek confidential financial information about other NFL teams.

The issue dissipated quickly, however.

Robert Baxley, representing the Raiders, told Harelson that Rozelle and Culverhouse had been subpoenaed only because it was expected that Klein’s lawyers, too, would be seeking their testimony about the value of NFL franchises--figures that the jurors could have weighed in deciding what, if any, punitive damages to impose on Davis and the Raiders.

But Joseph Cotchett, an attorney for Klein, said he never had any intention of putting either man on the stand.

With that, Harelson quashed the subpoenas. Later in the day, he ordered Davis to pay the NFL’s $250 in legal costs.

Harelson then unsealed secret documents revealing that an alternate juror and a federal judge had come forward with information about possible jury misconduct in the case. Davis’ legal team submitted the documents earlier this month to back a request that Harelson vacate the $5-million verdict and declare a mistrial.

One of the documents was a sworn statement from Davis’ private secretary, Beverly Swanson, detailing a call she received one week after the jury’s Dec. 10 decision from alternate juror Stacey Thomas of San Diego.

Swanson says Thomas told her juror Gail Gilmette had told her the jury made mistakes in its verdict, but that some jurors were “too proud to admit it.”

The Raiders’ lawyers also submitted a sworn statement from U.S. District Judge Judith Keep. Keep said a box boy at a Pacific Beach grocery store told her one of his co-workers--apparently Gilmette, a clerk at the store--also said the jury was confused about its deliberations.

“She told him that the jury was surprised that they had to go back and decide punitive damages because they thought they had already decided that issue,” Keep related in her statement.

Under questioning by Harelson, Thomas confirmed she had contacted Davis’ office. But the judge, who retired from the bench early this month but agreed to finish hearing the Klein-Davis case, denied the motion for a mistrial and declined to interrogate any other jurors.

He dismissed Thomas as an alternate and instructed her not to talk about the case with anyone.

The two sides did reach one agreement Monday--one expected to shorten Phase 2 of the trial by several days.

Rather than call in witnesses to testify about the value of the Raiders, Cotchett and Alioto stipulated that the franchise is worth between $62.2 million and $70.1 million. They agreed that Davis owns 28% of the Raiders and has other personal assets worth not more than $1 million.