Anaheim Might Sue Angels

The Anaheim City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to sue the Angels immediately if they change their name to the Los Angeles Angels and to consider suing them even if they do not.

City officials, concerned that a lawsuit against their baseball team would make the NFL skittish about awarding a football team to Anaheim, extended reassurances to the NFL on Tuesday. City Manager Dave Morgan plans to call Angel President Dennis Kuhl today, inviting him to clarify the Angels’ strategy and eliminate the possibility of a lawsuit.

Morgan said city officials have not discussed whether to permit the NFL to put a Los Angeles name on an Anaheim team, as when the Los Angeles Rams played in Anaheim Stadium, or whether Angel owner Arte Moreno might help the city lure an NFL franchise in exchange for the city allowing Moreno to drop the Anaheim name from the Angels.

“The council has expressed in very clear terms that they’d rather lose football than change the name,” Morgan said. “That’s how important it is to them. But we don’t think it needs to come to that.”

The Angel Stadium lease, inherited by Moreno when he bought the team from the Walt Disney Co. two years ago, requires the team to be called the Anaheim Angels. The lease extends through 2029, with a one-time escape clause in 2016.

Moreno believes the Los Angeles name would help raise revenue by reminding local broadcasters and national advertisers that the Angels play in the second-largest media market in the country, not only Orange County, and persuading them to pay accordingly.

Commissioner Bud Selig has given Moreno his blessing but has urged him to work with the city rather than act unilaterally. With no communication from the Angels, and with no response from the letter of objection Morgan sent to Selig on Monday, city officials felt compelled to act Tuesday.

“We need to be prepared,” Mayor Curt Pringle said. “We are not interested in being caught flat-footed.”

The Angels have not notified the city of any decision because they have not made one, said Tim Mead, vice president of communications.

“It is still a concept being discussed,” Mead said. “There’s nothing imminent. You have the conversation when you finalize the strategy.”

The city and the Angels waged a court fight from 1983-94 after the team disputed development rights within the stadium parking lot granted to the Rams. Although another legal battle between the city and the Angels would not help Anaheim’s chance with the NFL, Morgan said he did not believe a battle would seriously jeopardize that chance, either.

With the NFL evaluating sites for a possible stadium in Anaheim, Los Angeles, Pasadena and Carson, Morgan spoke Tuesday to Neil Glatt, the league’s vice president of strategic planning, and explained the city’s need to act now.

“I didn’t sense any alarms going off,” Morgan said.

In negotiations with the city, the NFL could ask for the right to use the Los Angeles name for an Anaheim team, Pringle said. But the city will not sit idly, he said, should the Angels adopt the Los Angeles name and in so doing violate a negotiated agreement.

If the Angels drop Anaheim from their name, Tuesday’s council vote authorized the immediate filing of an injunction, in which the city would ask a judge to stop the Angels at once pending a trial.

The vote also authorized attorneys to research whether the city should file a lawsuit charging the Angels already had violated their lease by removing the Anaheim name from uniforms, merchandise and all publicity outlets, including the team website, newspaper ads, radio and television broadcasts and stadium announcements.

The city might find legal support in its position even though the lease includes no specific provision about how the Angels should promote the team, said Arthur Rosett, professor of contract law at UCLA.

“There clearly is a promise by the team to use the city’s name,” Rosett said. “The question is, what is the scope of that promise? That would be a question of fact for a jury.”