ANAHEIM : Angels Lose Ruling in Stadium Lawsuit

An appeals court this week upheld a decision that Anaheim’s former city manager, the city and a third party did not defraud the California Angels during the deal that brought the Los Angeles Rams to Anaheim.

The suit was part of a larger lawsuit that will decide who has the right to develop a portion of the Anaheim Stadium parking lot that is not used for parking. In 1988, the court ruled that the California Angels have rights to 12,000 surface parking spaces in the 146-acre lot, but that the remaining 20 acres may be developed. There are two appeals to that case pending.

At stake in Tuesday’s decision in the 4th District Court of Appeal was about $5 million in legal fees that the ball club’s owner, Golden West Baseball Co., claimed was due from former City Manager William O. Talley, the city and the Anaheim Stadium Associates, a Rams-affiliated partnership.

“We don’t agree with it. I don’t think it will have any outcome on the larger case whatsoever,” said William B. Campbell, a lawyer for the Angels.

Talley, however, praised the decision. “I’m glad that the appeals court found what we’ve maintained all along--that the Angels can’t do what they did,” he said.

Talley, now city manager in Dana Point, has a countersuit still pending against the ball club’s parent company, alleging that officials there helped orchestrate his 1987 dismissal from the Anaheim city manager’s post.

As part of the deal that moved the Rams to Anaheim in 1980, Anaheim Stadium Associates was to build high-rise office buildings on about 90 acres of the stadium parking lot.