Jury Rejects Raiders’ Claim to NFL Rights in Los Angeles

A Superior Court jury on Monday rejected the Oakland Raiders’ claim to the Los Angeles area, granting uncontested power over the region to the National Football League and further dimming the prospects that the city will get an NFL team in the foreseeable future.

In striking down the Raiders’ $1-billion lawsuit against the league, the Los Angeles jury also rejected the team’s claim that the NFL sabotaged a proposed 1995 deal to build a football stadium at Hollywood Park.

It was the second high-stakes confrontation in two decades between Raiders owner Al Davis and the NFL in a Los Angeles courtroom. The Raiders beat the NFL in court in a 1982 antitrust case when they first moved to Los Angeles.

Monday, after an 11-week trial, including three weeks of deliberation, the jury ruled in the NFL’s favor, 9 to 3.

Although the verdict does not directly affect Los Angeles’ chances of getting an NFL team, it does effectively kill any hope the Raiders had of returning here. The league has no plans for expansion in the foreseeable future and pledged again Monday to discourage any existing team from moving.

Said NFL Vice President Joe Browne of Monday’s verdict: “The truth regarding what happened is found in the Raiders’ own June 23, 1995, media release announcing their decision to leave Los Angeles. It stated, ‘The Raiders have chosen to relocate to Oakland.’ ”

Raider attorney Joseph Alioto did not say whether the team would appeal.

“Obviously, we are disappointed,” he said. “But we do believe the evidence we presented cannot be disputed.”

Davis was not in court Monday. He had been a constant courtroom visitor during the trial, grimacing or laughing out loud at some of the testimony presented by the league. But he was traveling on Monday, “somewhere in the South,” according to Alioto.

Also absent was NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who was in Chicago for a league meeting.

Ultimately, jurors said, the decision came down to questions about the accuracy of Davis’ testimony and the Raiders’ failure to call Hollywood Park official R.D. Hubbard, a key figure in the negotiations, to the witness stand.

Said juror J.P. Abiog, “The fact that they didn’t have Hubbard there to testify killed them. We felt the Raiders were the ones making the claim, so they should have had him there.”

Nine jurors, the minimum required for a verdict, supported the overall decision. The vote was 10 to 2 on the territorial claim and 9 to 3 on the Hollywood Park issue.

“The evidence showed that the NFL had offered the Raiders and the Hollywood Park project more support than any other stadium project before or since,” Browne said. “That financial support simply was not enough to satisfy the Raiders. They elected, instead, to abandon Los Angeles in 1995 for up-front money and a promise of sellouts in Oakland.”

The Raiders said Tagliabue had intervened at the eleventh hour of negotiations to change the wording in a proposed agreement with Hollywood Park to allow a second team to start playing in the new stadium along with the Raiders.

“No other team has been required to share a stadium like that,” Alioto said.

The Raiders had based their continuing claim to the area on the terms of the settlement of the antitrust case. Awarded a sum that, with interest, had grown to $64 million, the Raiders agreed to accept $18 million in 1989. In the case decided Monday, the Raiders said that waiving the remaining $46 million entitled them to keep the territorial rights to L.A.

Browne said, “The Raiders abandoned Los Angeles when they returned to Oakland in 1995, just as they deserted Oakland in 1982 when they moved to the Los Angeles Coliseum.”

Tagliabue had testified that Davis told him in a crucial June 9, 1995, phone call that he was “going to do the deal” at Hollywood Park.

Davis said he had told Tagliabue at the time, “You’re killing the deal.”

Said juror Tim Taylor of Los Angeles, “There were definitely some contradictions in Al Davis’ testimony.”

Forewoman Kimberly Hamilton of Los Angeles said, “I don’t believe Al Davis was telling the truth about the June 9 [telephone] conversation. I don’t believe the conversation with Commissioner Tagliabue was an angry conversation, where [Davis] said, ‘You’re killing the deal.’

“I believe that what he was doing was to weigh both deals, the Oakland deal with the Hollywood Park deal. He was going to . . . continue to negotiate, to see what he could get.”

Hamilton added that she thought the Raider deal with Hollywood Park was still a work in progress when the Raiders pulled out.

“Most people thought it was understood that this was like a tentative agreement,” she said. “It was not going to be finalized until all the negotiations were done and it was reduced down to a written contract and signed.”

Hamilton also rejected the Raider argument on territorial rights.

“I believe that the Raiders did not have enough evidence to show that they met the burden of proof,” she said. “Once they left and went back to Oakland, they forfeited their rights to the L.A. market.”

After deliberating for nearly a week, the jury had to begin anew when the foreman was excused because of a prior vacation commitment.

From that point on, according to jurors, the sentiment was on the side of the NFL by an 8-4 vote, one short of what was needed for a verdict.

A key issue was the financial responsibility of the league toward the Raiders. When Judge Richard C. Hubbell clarified that point by explaining that the responsibility was to the league as a whole, a decision seemed possible.

“I think it was the last question we had asked, if the NFL had a fiduciary duty to one particular group,” said juror Alice Iriqui of Norwalk. “The judge answered our question, and it changed one vote. It actually was 8 to 4 most of the time. It changed one of the jurors’ minds.”

The mind of one other juror, however, remained unchanged by Monday’s decision.

“I felt the Oakland Raiders definitely had a strong case,” said William Steward of Inglewood. “It’s just an unjust incident that happened today.”

The news of the NFL victory comes as league officials are preparing to announce a new division alignment to accommodate the Houston team that got the expansion spot Los Angeles officials had hoped for.

“Unfortunately for this area, Los Angeles will not be included in that alignment,” Browne said. “We don’t see any more expansion on the horizon, and we always work to keep our existing teams where they are.”

Los Angeles and Orange counties have been without an NFL team since 1995, when the Raiders went back to Oakland and the Rams left Anaheim for St. Louis.

*

RELATED STORY

Commentary: Jury makes clear what fans have known: The Raiders aren’t coming back. D1

*

Times staff writer Lisa Dillman contributed to this story.