Davis Says Tagliabue Is Lying in Trial

In testimony that produced laughs and snorts of derision from Raider owner Al Davis, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue told a Los Angeles Superior Court jury Friday that he did not want the Raider franchise to leave Los Angeles six years ago.

Saying that L.A. without an NFL presence was a “serious business disaster,” Tagliabue, under questioning from NFL attorney Allen Ruby, traced the chronology of negotiations in 1994 and 1995 involving the league, team and Hollywood Park, site of a proposed $250-million stadium--a proposal that took on added urgency with the move of the Rams from Anaheim to St. Louis in April 1995.

In May of that year, the NFL authorized one Super Bowl game at the site if the Raiders alone moved into the stadium--and at least two Super Bowls if the Raiders would agree to share the stadium with another NFL team. Tagliabue said Davis told him at the time that a second team would be “a plus.” At that, Davis, across the courtroom, laughed so loudly he quickly covered his face with his hands.

Later, outside the courtroom, Davis called Tagliabue’s testimony “a raft of lies.”

The commissioner, who has been advised by NFL lawyers not to speak with reporters about the case outside the courtroom, left without comment.

Tagliabue’s remarks, marking the end of the first week of testimony in a trial expected to run until May, were made as the NFL sought to weave its side of the complicated case for the jury. The Raiders allege that the league interfered with the deal at Hollywood Park, leaving Davis no choice but to return to Oakland. The team also insists it still owns the L.A. market for NFL football.

The Raiders, who played in Los Angeles from 1982 through 1994 before returning to Oakland in 1995, are seeking damages of more than $1 billion. The league denies any wrongdoing.

The issue of a second team at the Hollywood Park site is a major point of contention in the case.

With the exception of the New York Giants and Jets, who share Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., no NFL team shares a stadium with another. And in that instance, the arrangement is amicable.

In no way, the Raiders say, did they want to share a stadium at Hollywood Park.

On the stand, Tagliabue told the NFL’s version of events.

He emphasized that the Los Angeles area, the nation’s second-largest television market, has long been important to the league.

It was especially important in the mid-1990s because Fox, with a Los Angeles base, began televising the NFL in 1994. That gave the NFL a “strong new focus” on L.A., Tagliabue said.

However, the Northridge earthquake in January of 1994 damaged the Coliseum, where the Raiders were playing--so much so that Davis inquired about the possibility of the team’s playing in Oakland in 1994, Tagliabue testified.

Ruby seized on that. And now, the lawyer asked, the team says the league “made them go” to Oakland in 1995? Tagliabue didn’t answer the question directly--but several jurors scribbled furiously in their notebooks.

Meanwhile, in April 1995, the league authorized the Rams’ departure from Anaheim. It wasn’t until then, Tagliabue said, that the possibility of a two-team arrangement at Hollywood Park became, for him, a priority.

That May, the league passed a resolution calling for at least one Super Bowl game at Hollywood Park. The league also would have awarded the Raiders 10,000 Super Bowl tickets to help them sell premium seats at the stadium.

The resolution also said that if the Raiders and Hollywood Park worked out terms to grant an option for a second team to the NFL, which would then have been up to the league to exercise, the stadium would get a second Super Bowl and the Raiders the same 10,000-seat Super Bowl ticket deal.

The Raiders claim they needed more than one Super Bowl game to make the Hollywood Park finances work, making the option of a second team “a sham,” and were then largely shut out of negotiations for the second team. Though the Raider franchise did in fact vote for the resolution, the team claims it did so to try to salvage a bad situation.

Tagliabue, however, said the deal, particularly the lure of the Super Bowl seats, was unprecedented. He said other teams were eager to “get in on a deal like this.”

Asked by Ruby to respond to allegations that the league had, by virtue of the resolution, done “something bad” or “malicious” or “wrong” to the Raiders, Tagliabue said, “Absolutely false.”

Tagliabue is due to return to the stand next week. Carolina Panther owner Jerry Richardson will testify Monday.