Brooklyn Records a Victory

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn in 1958 and cannot stop a restaurant-bar there from using the team’s nickname.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Constance Baker Motley came after a four-year legal battle that followed the 1988 opening of The Brooklyn Dodger Sports Bar & Restaurant in the Bay Ridge neighborhood.

“We won and we won big as we deserve to,” said Richard Picardi, a part-owner of the restaurant-bar. “They just thought they would grind us down. They figured we were little guys in Brooklyn.”

Robert Kheel, the National League counsel, claimed victory as well. He noted the judge’s finding that the copyrights held by the Dodgers regarding the Brooklyn team were valid.

The dispute had torn open old wounds in a city that never quite got over losing the Dodgers to the West Coast in a move that ultimately led to the creation of the New York Mets.

Motley decided the team no longer has exclusive rights to the Brooklyn Dodgers copyright. The Dodgers and the commissioner’s office joined in the lawsuit to force the restaurant to change its name.

“It was the Brooklyn Dodgers name that had acquired secondary meaning in New York in the early part of this century, prior to 1958,” the judge wrote. “It was that cultural institution that Los Angeles abandoned.”