Moreno May Win; Angels Still Lose

I’ll tell you right off the bat where I’m coming from.

Arte Moreno’s decision to rename his baseball team the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim is misguided and duplicitous. Misguided because it makes a mockery of a major league baseball team name; duplicitous because, even though Moreno says he’s conforming to the lease requirement that “Anaheim” be included in the team name, it’s clear he hopes and expects down the road that people will think of the team as the Los Angeles Angels.

With that off my chest, I think he’s going to win the lawsuit the city filed against him and that may go to jurors as early as this afternoon. I think he’ll win it for various reasons, even with an Orange County jury making the call. It takes nine jurors in a civil trial to reach a verdict, meaning Moreno needs only four of the 12 to side with him.

On its face, the case seems driven by common-sense and fair play. Of course, the city expected Anaheim to be prominent in any future team name.

And in 1996, Anaheim had every reason to assume it had covered itself -- even with the loose language in the lease it negotiated with the Disney Co. After all, even if Disney came up with an inventive new name or mascot to replace California Angels, no major league team had ever featured two geographical sites in its name. So the city reasonably assumed that “Anaheim” would appear in box scores, scoreboards and TV graphics and get the national publicity it craved.

The city’s lawyers have pounded away on that intent. However, I foresee enough jurors deciding it’s unfair to hold Moreno to the intent of an agreement he didn’t negotiate. Yes, he assumes the contract’s terms, but why hold him to an unspoken intent, when the actual lease language gives him wiggle room?

If Disney were still the owner and had renamed the team Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the city’s argument would carry more weight. But jurors have heard that Disney wanted to keep all options open. If true for Disney, why not for Moreno?

That feeds into my second reason for thinking Moreno will win. If the jury decides against him, it has to award damages. When you think of damage claims, you think of bad boys like tobacco companies, product-safety violators or libelers.

Will a jury sock it to Moreno for a name change? I don’t think so. As the guy who put up $180 million for a team that was losing money, he’s free to make dumb decisions, and a loophole let him do it. I suspect jurors will take it a step further and, at the risk of overstating my analogy, ask where the victims are. With a thriving Anaheim today, jurors can only speculate about future harm done to the city by the name change.

It’s also possible that jurors will cut to the chase: Contract lawyers spend dozens of hours hammering away at lease language -- specifically to eliminate loose ends. Jurors have heard testimony that Anaheim couldn’t get the exact phraseology it wanted on the team name, so it settled for what it got. In other words, the team-name language wasn’t an oversight -- it was simply the best the city could get from Disney.

Jurors may believe, as I do, that Moreno jobbed the city but that he didn’t violate the lease.

The judge has instructed the jury not to read the papers, so jurors won’t be reading this prognostication. Nor am I putting any money on my position; to the contrary, Anaheim attorney Andy Guilford has been so effective at times that a win for the city wouldn’t shock me.

As a lifelong baseball fan, the “Los Angeles Angels” name offends my sense of propriety. Drawing fans from afar doesn’t make an Orange County team the Los Angeles Angels any more than the Dodgers drawing from Santa Barbara makes them the Santa Barbara Dodgers.

So, a big Bronx cheer to Mr. Moreno. And a heartfelt pitch that he reconsider the L.A. name thing and really get creative about selling the Angels of Anaheim.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.