Raiders Square Off With NFL

Perhaps $1 billion, maybe more, and possibly the future of the NFL in Los Angeles are at stake as the Oakland Raiders and the league square off beginning today in what seems sure to be a contentious case in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Jury selection begins today for a trial that, according to legal documents, will trace the Raiders’ arrival in Los Angeles in 1982 and their abrupt departure in 1995, when they returned to their ancestral homeland in Oakland. Largely at issue is whether the Raiders or the league “own” the rights to Los Angeles.

The case also promises to unveil the inner workings of powerful NFL committees and reveal some of the league’s closely held financial documents, kept secret through years of pretrial maneuvering. The case also will spotlight a simmering animosity between the Raiders and some other owners and senior NFL officials, notably Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. He is scheduled as the first witness, called not by the league but by the Raiders.

The Raiders also intend to call as “hostile witnesses”--as the law calls them and as some very well may turn out to be--owners Bud Adams of the Tennessee Titans, Art Modell of the Baltimore Ravens, Pat Bowlen of the Denver Broncos, Jerry Richardson of the Carolina Panthers, Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots, Wellington Mara of the New York Giants and Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys.

Cleveland Brown President Carmen Policy, a former San Francisco 49er executive, is on the Raider witness list as well. Al Davis, the Raiders’ owner, also intends to testify.

A Raider victory in court would not necessarily bring the team back to Los Angeles. But there has been no team in the L.A. area since the Raiders followed the Rams out of town in 1995, the Raiders’ attendance in Oakland has been lagging and Los Angeles--the nation’s second-largest television market, arguably the entertainment capital of the world--beckons with virtually unmatched opportunities for a savvy NFL entrepreneur.

And a win of the magnitude the Raiders are seeking--roughly $1 billion in damages, perhaps more--would give Davis enormous leverage to shape the destiny of the franchise as well as any plans the league might develop for expansion or the relocation to Southern California of another team. Over the years, Davis has told others he wants to move back to Los Angeles.

Although the Raiders are back in Oakland, the team adamantly insists that it was forced out of Los Angeles and still “owns” the rights to the L.A. market. The NFL maintains the Raiders left town and that the league “owns” Los Angeles.

“Our attitude is, we came down here and we had to buy the place,” meaning the L.A. market, said the Raiders’ lead attorney, prominent San Francisco litigator Joe Alioto. “Now, we decided to leave. Even if we decided to leave voluntarily, which we didn’t, they can’t take it. We still own it.”

Responded NFL spokesman Joe Browne: “We say there’s no basis in fact for that assumption. I think the testimony will show that Los Angeles remains a league opportunity and that Los Angeles is a market where the league can decide, will decide, which team plays there--not the Raiders. It’s a league decision, not the Raiders’ decision.”

Understanding the complicated case that will play out before jurors in Superior Court Department 62, Judge Richard Hubbell presiding, requires some background.

Without league approval, the Raiders moved from Oakland to Los Angeles before the 1982 season, generating a lengthy, divisive, expensive court battle.

In 1983, the Raiders won millions of dollars in damages from the NFL after claiming the league had violated antitrust laws by trying to block the move. Then as now, Alioto was a Raider legal mainstay--on a legal team headed by his father, the late Joseph L. Alioto, a former mayor of San Francisco. Among the league’s lawyers was Tagliabue.

Later, the sides settled the judgment. As part of the settlement, the Raiders’ award, which with interest had grown to nearly $65 million, essentially was trimmed by an “offset”--defined by the courts as the difference between what the NFL could get for a more valuable expansion franchise in Los Angeles minus a less valuable expansion franchise in Oakland.

That “offset,” which totaled nearly $50 million, gives rise to the Raiders’ position that they have paid for the right to the L.A. market.

“If they want it,” Alioto said of league officials, “they can pay for it,” noting that the expansion franchise awarded in 1999 to Houston went for $700 million. “What they’re trying to do is, they’re just trying to take it.”

Meantime, Alioto said, again referring to NFL officials, “These guys cannot get it out of their mind that Al Davis filed a lawsuit, a justifiable lawsuit, under the antitrust laws, which all the courts have upheld. You will find during the course of this trial that these people are still upset and one of them, a distinguished old member of the NFL, referred to Al’s court victories . . . as ‘atrocities.’ ” Alioto would not say who’d made that statement.

But he added, “There are two standards here. There’s the standard with regard to everyone else. Then there’s the standard with regard to Al Davis and the Raiders. That’s got to stop. These guys are supposed to be a bunch of adults. They’re not. They’ve got to grow up.”

Browne, sighing, said, “I think there’s a good deal of an us-against-them mentality in the Raiders’ offices. I think it is not uncommon in football to describe to a team a scenario in which the whole world is out to get them and they have to unite together against the world.

“In this case, the management of the Raiders has convinced themselves, and is trying to convince others, that the league is against them. The facts in this case will show just the opposite.”

The Raiders played in Los Angeles at the Coliseum. They won the 1984 Super Bowl. Davis, however, was unhappy at the Coliseum. In 1987, he announced he would move the team to Irwindale. That deal fell through, although Davis kept a $10-million advance payment from the San Gabriel Valley city.

In 1994, the Northridge earthquake struck Southern California. Despite a multimillion-dollar federally funded earthquake repair of the Coliseum, the quake accelerated Davis’ efforts to move out of the stadium. Unlike a newer generation of NFL stadiums, the Coliseum has no luxury boxes, meaning the Raiders could not generate the lucrative revenue that others in the league, in new stadiums, were suddenly enjoying.

In 1995, a proposal was made under which the Raiders would move to a $250-million, privately financed stadium at Hollywood Park.

At issue now is what happened to that proposal.

Amy Trask, the Raiders’ chief executive, said: “The reason I feel so passionately about this--when someone says to me, ‘What is this case about?’--this case is about the NFL’s efforts to destroy our opportunity and deprive all of Southern California of a privately financed stadium to befit the entertainment capital of the world.”

In May 1995, the league passed a resolution calling for at least one Super Bowl to be played at a Hollywood Park stadium. The resolution also would have awarded the Raiders 10,000 Super Bowl tickets--more than the regular home-team allotment--to help them sell suites and premium seats at the new stadium.

“The league tried to help them stay in Los Angeles at a new stadium at Hollywood Park,” Browne says now.

For their part, in court papers the Raiders call the resolution “a ruse and a sham.” They allege that Tagliabue and the league had previously promised multiple Super Bowls at the site and that the team and Hollywood Park had relied upon those representations in structuring financing and other deal points. A single Super Bowl, the team says now, was not enough.

The league says in court papers that it offered a second Super Bowl--plus another 10,000 tickets--if the Raiders agreed that a second team could play its home games at the stadium for a “limited amount of time.”

The Raiders admittedly voted for that resolution--but say now in court papers that they did so to try to salvage the deal, to “make the best of the bad situation created by the league.”

The Raiders also say that putting a second team at what was originally to be their stadium amounted to an NFL plan to “greatly reduce, if not destroy, the financial attractiveness and likely success of the project for the Raiders, and thus drive the Raiders from Los Angeles.”

Which, the team alleges, it did, because there were no other “adequate and already existing” stadiums in L.A.

As for what would motivate the NFL to drive the Raiders out of L.A., the Raiders say in court documents that a privately financed stadium “posed a threat” to other NFL owners who were trying to “extract substantial public moneys for their own respective new stadium deals.”

Moreover, the Raiders allege, the history of ill will between the team and the league meant the league “simply could not abide” the Raiders’ obtaining a “premier stadium opportunity like Hollywood Park in a premier market like Los Angeles.”

On that point, the team adds, “Having thus accomplished the goal of driving the Raiders from the Los Angeles market, one member of [a special league committee reviewing the Hollywood Park proposal] made clear that the league did not intend to let the Raiders ever play in the Los Angeles area again. Indeed, he stated that if the Raiders ever tried to do so, ‘That’s the time we got to line up the guns at the city gates.’ ”

The league’s position is that the Raiders simply got a deal in 1995 from Oakland that Davis couldn’t refuse.

“Whatever damages the Raiders suffered, the testimony will show they were all self-inflicted,” Browne said. “We did not hurt them. Rather, we tried to help them. For their own reasons, they elected to move back to Northern California--where, I might add, they are embroiled in additional litigation.”

In a separate lawsuit in Sacramento County, the Raiders claim they were lured to Oakland in part by fraudulent means--misled into believing the team’s home games there would be sellouts. In that case, a judge ruled several months ago that Davis and the Raiders were locked into the 16-year lease they signed there in 1995. The lease has 10 years to run.

For that reason, Jeffrey Kessler, a prominent New York lawyer involved in the Sacramento case on behalf of Oakland and Alameda County, downplayed the possibility of the Raiders bolting back to L.A.

“I view the case against the NFL as about what Al is always about--money,” Kessler said. “He’s simply trying to seek a large amount of money from the NFL.”

Added influential San Francisco attorney Jim Brosnahan, now the lead trial lawyer for several of the East Bay entities in the Sacramento case: “The [Oakland] fans are assuming that Al Davis would not break their hearts again.”

But he also said, “Raider management keeps doing things that give out . . . the aroma of some desire to move. The only one that can answer that is Al Davis. . . .

“He ought to answer that question. He ought to say he’s staying in Oakland and ought not to create an atmosphere, which he has, that creates a big guessing game.”

Trial in Los Angeles is expected to last six to eight weeks. Opening statements could be made as soon as Friday but more likely early next week, lawyers said.