Jury Foreman’s Note Throws Kink Into Trial

The jury foreman in the Oakland Raiders’ $1-billion lawsuit against the NFL sent a note Thursday saying he’s going on vacation Saturday, raising the prospect of a verdict today or deliberations beginning again from scratch.

The foreman, a 60-year-old Los Angeles city employee, sent word late Thursday afternoon to Superior Court Judge Richard C. Hubbell that he had a prepaid ticket to leave town this weekend. The trial is in its eighth week. The jury finished a fourth day of deliberations Thursday.

If deliberations have to begin anew, a juror will be selected from one of five alternate jurors, who have been killing time this week on a hard bench in an alcove outside the sixth-floor courtroom in the downtown County Courthouse. A sixth alternate was excused Thursday.

The case revolves around the Raiders’ claim that the NFL interfered with a 1995 proposal to build a stadium at Hollywood Park. The Raiders, who played in Los Angeles from 1982 through 1994, also claim they still own the L.A. market for NFL football. They are asking for more than $1 billion in actual damages, plus punitive damages.

The league denies any wrongdoing.

A dispute erupted late Thursday over whether either side wanted the foreman dismissed immediately, or at all.

The NFL at first objected to a dismissal because it wanted to check with its lead lawyer in the case, Allen Ruby, who was in San Jose, and out of a concern for other jurors having to start over, league spokesman Joe Browne said.

Raider attorney Joseph M. Alioto, however, said the NFL not only initially objected to the foreman’s being dismissed--which presumably would have obligated the foreman to miss out on his vacation--but wanted that objection on the record. When the possibility of that objection being read into the record--meaning in open court, before the jury--was brought up, the NFL promptly switched gears and said it would consider its options, Alioto said.

Browne said after court ended, “If a juror has a binding vacation commitment, then we will, of course, respect that, thank him for his service and wish him well.”

The NFL, meantime, said that the Raiders had wanted the foreman dismissed immediately.

Not true, Alioto said. He said the foreman’s note, which has been shown only to the lawyers in the case, indicated that deliberations might stretch into next week. If so, Alioto said, if a freshly constituted jury--with a new foreman--ends up getting the case, it makes sense to consider restarting deliberations today instead of waiting.

The unknown, of course, is whether the jury can finish by today. A complication is that if the jury does reach a verdict today, the loser in the case is all but certain in any appeal to claim that time pressure compelled a verdict.

Earlier Thursday, a jury note had asked for a definition of the words “principal” and “agent” in the 66th of the 101 instructions in the case--an instruction on the question of whether the NFL owed a fiduciary duty to the Raiders.