Raider Lawsuit Begins at Sacramento

The Raiders were lured back to Oakland after 13 seasons in Los Angeles on the false promise of a packed stadium welcoming back the team in black, a Raider attorney said Monday.

In opening statements in the $1-billion lawsuit against the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, a nonprofit business that runs the stadium, and the defunct Arthur Andersen accounting firm, attorney Roger Dreyer presented the team’s allegations that it was defrauded eight years ago and is now in danger of failing.

The team’s return to Oakland after its contract expired in Southern California and after the powerful Northridge earthquake had weakened the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was said by government officials to be worth $1 billion in ticket sales for the team over 15 years, Dreyer said.

A letter to owner Al Davis, from Oakland city official Ezra Rapport, said there was “no precedent for a team as popular and legendary as the Raiders to return home.”

“The next generation want to get in the stadium to relive this experience,” Rapport wrote. “There is no better market anywhere in the world.”

Dreyer recalled the team’s history to the jury, starting with the birth of the Oakland Raiders in 1960 through the formation of the struggling American Football League and its merger with the NFL in 1970. He traced the team’s move to Southern California in 1982 and the negotiations that led to their return to Oakland.

He also pointed out to the 10-woman, two-man jury each of the team’s three Super Bowl championships as he referred to the “winningest professional franchise in all of sports.”

In 1995, as the NFL considered whether to approve the move to the Bay Area, the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum sent out press releases announcing that the stadium had been sold out for 1995 and most of 1996. Internal documents, however, show the claim of selling the rights to 47,000 seats was inflated by about 10,000. But that information was kept from the public and Davis.

“They knew it wasn’t true. They knew they didn’t have a sellout,” Dreyer said. “They weren’t even close.”