N.Y. State to Join Appeal of America’s Cup Ruling

New York state will join the San Diego Yacht Club in its appeal of a decision that handed the America’s Cup to New Zealand, the state attorney general’s office said.

A spokesman for State Atty. Gen. Robert Abrams said today that he will appeal the March 28 decision in which a New York court took yachting’s premier prize from the San Diego club.

State Supreme Court Justice Carmen Ciparick said the race between the swift catamaran Stars and Stripes and New Zealand banker Michael Fay’s 133-foot sloop was a “gross mismatch.”

She ordered San Diego to forfeit the cup it won easily at sea and awarded it to Fay’s boat, which is named New Zealand.

David Fishlow, a spokesman for Abrams, said New York will go to court once Ciparick signs her decision.

The decision follows an announcement Monday by San Diego that it will appeal the decision. The two appeals will be joined together in a suit to be filed with the Appellate Division of New York Supreme Court.

Fishlow said the attorney general is entering the case because the “Deed of Gift” that set up yachting’s most famous race in 1851 was filed in New York.

The New York attorney general acts as legal protector of the beneficiaries of charitable trusts.

Fishlow said New York state does not believe that the race was a mismatch or that the “Deed of Gift” barred catamarans from racing against yachts. But even if it did, he said, Ciparick should have ordered a new race, not a forfeit.