Only One of Four Rams-Related Lawsuits Settled

In writing the recent post introducing the Sunday Poll I goofed. A readers comment left on the Facebook link explains my mistake:

You are mixing up 2 different lawsuits.

The lawsuit you referenced in 2017 is St. Louis City, St. Louis County and the Regional Convention and Sports Authority against the NFL for Breach of Contract for not being honest in their statements as the plans for a new stadium were being developed.

That lawsuit is still quite a while from any determination.

The lawsuit settled this week was a class action lawsuit of Rams Personal Seat License Owners vs. the Rams alone, claiming they had the rights to buy tickets for 30 years. Since the Rams left after 21 years, they asked for their money back and/or the right to buy seats at the new Rams stadium in LA.

The settlement in this suit was the Rams paying back 30% of the amount of the PSL.

In my hurry to finish the post I wasn’t as thorough as usual, my apologies.  After the fact, I’ve done the research I should’ve done earlier.

In September the Post-Dispatch explained four ongoing lawsuits:

• One lawsuit involves future ownership of the Rams’ former practice facility in Earth City, known for years as Rams Park.
• A second involves fans who bought tickets and team merchandise in the final years of the Rams’ time in St. Louis.
• A third is a class-action suit on behalf of thousands of PSL (personal seat license) holders from the team’s 21-season stay in St. Louis.
• The fourth, and biggest of the four, basically challenges the way the Rams, the NFL, and the 31 other NFL teams and owners went about the process of relocating the Rams from St. Louis to Los Angeles.

It’s the third lawsuit over PSLs that has been settled.

The original PSLs were good for 30 seasons, coinciding with the 30-year length of the stadium lease at what was once called the Edward Jones Dome. As such, they would be good through the 2024 season, but then the Rams moved to LA after 21 seasons in St. Louis.

The suit sought a refund for the unused nine years worth of the seat license fee plus damages, and in some cases the chance to buy Rams season tickets in Los Angeles. Citing a Forbes article, the suit said the average price of the original 46,000 licenses was $2,085 per ticket for a total of about $96 million.

The case itself involves more than 20,000 ticket accounts. (Post-Dispatch)

The other mistake I made was not making the poll question controversial, so the responses were far fewer than usual. The results can be viewed on the original post.

Again, my apologies for these mistakes.

— Steve Patterson

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Sunday Poll: Did You Think the Lawsuit Against the Rams Would Fail or be a Success?

St. Louis received some positive football-related news last week. First, professional football is returning. Well, sort of…

Attorneys representing thousands of St. Louis Rams PSL-holders filed a motion for preliminary approval Wednesday in U.S. District Court.

This follows the news last week that the parties had reached a settlement in a class-action suit filed shortly after NFL owners approved the relocation of the Rams from St. Louis to Los Angeles on Jan. 12, 2016.

In May 2017 the majority who participated in a non-scientific Sunday Poll didn’t think the lawsuit against the Rams would be successful. See: Readers: Lawsuit Against NFL Won’t Be Successful.

This poll will automatically close at 8pm tonight.

— Steve Patterson

Readers: Lawsuit Against NFL Won’t Be Successful

On Friday we learned about the legal team coming to St. Louis to defend the NFL & Rams against the lawsuit filed by St. Louis:

To no one’s surprise, the NFL is sending in its “A-team” in the St. Louis breach of contract lawsuit over the relocation of the Rams to Los Angeles.

The Washington-based law firm of Covington & Burling will represent the NFL and 31 of its 32 teams, according to court records and sources familiar with the case.

The exception is the Rams, who are represented by Kirkland & Ellis, also a nationally prominent law firm but headquartered in Chicago.

 

Also representing the NFL and the 31 other teams locally is Jerry Carmody of Clayton-based Carmody MacDonald. (Post-Dispatch)

The case is filed in St. Louis Circuit Court (22nd): 1722-CC00976 – STL REGIONAL CONV ET AL V NATL FOOTBALL LEAGUE ET.  (find on CaseNet)

In the recent non-scientific Sunday Poll a slim majority of those who voted don’t think the lawsuit will be successful.

Q:  Agree or disagree: St. Louis’ lawsuit against the Rams/NFL will recoup millions spent trying to keep the team here.

• Strongly agree 9 [16.67%]
• Agree 5 [9.26%]
• Somewhat agree 7 [12.96%]
• Neither agree or disagree 3 [5.56%]
• Somewhat disagree 1 [1.85%]
• Disagree 8 [14.81%]
• Strongly disagree 20 [37.04%]
• Unsure/No Answer 1 [1.85%]

The home field advantage for the plaintiffs certainly helps, but the local jurors will need to be convinced. I’m not going to say either way because it is hard to predict outcomes of lawsuits. I’m tracking the case through CaseNet — the jury trial is currently scheduled to start at 9am on Monday October 2, 2017. The case is currently assigned to Judge Michael K Mullen.

I hope they’re successful, but I can’t help but think of Metro’s 2007 court loss.  Not an apples to apples comparison — but it comes to mind as an embarrassing loss.

— Steve Patterson

Sunday Poll: Will St. Louis’ Lawsuit Against The Rams/NFL Be Successful?

It has been over a year since the Rams returned to Los Angeles after a costly failed attempt to keep them in St. Louis.Last month a lawsuit was filed relating to the effort to keep the NFL team here:

The relocation of the Rams from St. Louis to Los Angeles has left many fans in St. Louis angered and disillusioned. Some of them are convinced that the team’s owner, Stan Kroenke, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell dishonestly conspired to sell out the Gateway City for the riches and glamour of Los Angeles. This anger has sparked the City of St. Louis and the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority (RSA) to sue the NFL and all of its teams. The lawsuit, which was filed in St. Louis Circuit Court on Wednesday, alleges that the NFL and its teams breached their own contractual commitments in how they assessed relocation plans. In doing so, the plaintiffs insist, the NFL defrauded the city and the RSA of over $100 million.

To be clear, the plaintiffs, who are represented by attorneys Robert Blitz and James Bennett, do not demand the return of the Rams to St. Louis. As has been shown in other franchise relocations, once a team leaves, it’s gone.
 
Instead, the city and RSA request that the court award them disgorgement of NFL profits that have been generated by the relocation and impose unspecified punitive damages as well. In other words, St. Louis wants the many millions of dollars that the NFL has gained from relocating the Rams to L.A., plus other money to reflect a stiff punishment for team and league officials allegedly behaving as frauds. (Sports Illustrated)

This is the subject of today’s poll:

This poll will close at 8pm.

— Steve Patterson

Forget A Football Stadium, North Riverfront Neighborhood Needs A Plan For Redevelopment

The Rams are retuning to Los Angeles. I think many forgot how we got them here in the first place. Without an NFL team since 1988 we attempted to get an expansion team, but that effort ended in December 1993 when Jacksonville FL got the 2nd expansion team. With a new dome underway political leaders had to find a way to pay for what was going to be a career-ending white elephant.

In January 1995 the Los Angeles Rams were negotiating a relocation to St. Louis, but NFL owners rejected the relocation in March ’95. Following legal threats against the NFL, the owners approved the relocation the following month:

St. Louis has has been without an NFL team since 1988, when Cardinal owner Bill Bidwill, tired of being a secondary tenant to the baseball Cardinals in outdated Busch Stadium, moved his team to Phoenix.

St. Louis was considered a lock for an NFL expansion team in 1993, but conflicting ownership groups and financial problems doomed that bid, and Charlotte, N.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., were awarded franchises.

Fans thought New England Patriots owner James Orthwein, a St. Louis native, would move his team to St. Louis in early 1994, but New England businessman Robert Kraft purchased the team at the last minute and kept it in the Boston area.

And St. Louis city and county officials nearly blew their chance at luring the Rams last summer because, until September, they couldn’t wrest control of the new stadium lease from a stubborn beer distributor who had the desire, but not the money, to buy an NFL team.

But the city finally cleaned up its act when, after Shaw broke off talks with St. Louis in August, former U.S. Sen. Thomas Eagleton stepped in and convinced aspiring owner Jerry Clinton to turn over his 30% share of the stadium lease for $8 million and the use of a luxury suite for 20 years.

The new stadium, under construction downtown, is scheduled to be completed in late October, meaning Ram home games for the first half of their first season in St. Louis might be played in Busch Stadium.

The Rams weren’t here permanently —  they were just on loan. Our desperation to fill the Dome we were building resulted in a too good to pass up deal for the Rams. We borrowed them for 21 seasons and one Super Bowl. Hell, they would’ve left a decade earlier if Georgia Frontiere wouldn’t have waived the right to go year to year after the Dome failed to be in the top tier after the first check in 2005.

Despite his claims otherwise, Kroenke likely planned to move the Rams when he purchased a majority stake. To think otherwise is foolish, he owned sports teams all over the country — it’s no big deal to fly to Los Angeles in your private jet. The writing on the wall was obvious to everyone but football nuts and elected officials worried about getting reelected if they didn’t show an effort to keep the Rams from doing the inevitable.

So $16+ million public dollars were spent so elected officials could say “see, we tried.” In doing so, a large swath of the Near North Riverfront was targeted for demolition. This left property owners uncertain about the future. The William A. Kerr Foundation posted the following on Facebook:

Perhaps enough dust has settled that we can breathe a sigh of relief that our little green building no longer faces immanent demolition. During this past year’s great folly to build an NFL worthy stadium in this area, we received many words of support and admiration for what the WAKF has accomplished here and hopes that it would continue to exist. We are very touched and grateful for this outpouring of support and are pleased that many people and organizations will continue to be able to use and enjoy this space. Now we hope that you and the powers that be will put some focused energy and money into revitalizing this whole north riverfront area. Thank you for all your good wishes and support!!

Agreed — we should keep focusing on the North Riverfront — revitalizing — not razing the area.  Unlike in the early 90s, it doesn’t appear targeted properties were bought out. Nothing was razed.  But owners are likely leery about investing out of fear of being targeted again.

As a region we need to:

1. Accept we will not have another NFL team.
2. Be content with existing sports: MLB, NHL, MASL, USL, NCAA.
3. Consider attracting other sports, but not with a publicly-owned facility.
4. Build on the investment in planning a stadium by planning how to be life, investment, jobs, etc to the North Riverfront.

Schlafly Beer is looking for a location for a third brewery, perhaps the North Riverfront? Let’s put together a plan for the area, find a way to begin updating streets, sidewalks, lighting, etc. Market the hell out of the area to tun vacant properties into occupied buildings.

In the non-scientific Sunday Poll just over 20% said we should continue with the stadium plan — really folks!?!  Thankfully more than 3/4 don’t think we should.

Q: Agree or disagree? We should continue the North Riverfront stadium plan

• Strongly agree 3 [5.08%]
• Agree 5 [8.47%]
• Somewhat agree 4 [6.78%]
• Neither agree or disagree 1 [1.69%]
• Somewhat disagree 1 [1.69%]
• Disagree 6 [10.17%]
• Strongly disagree 38 [64.41%]
• Unsure/No Answer 1 [1.69%]

The first step is to remove the target from the North Riverfront.

— Steve Patterson