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Monday, June 27, 2005We're still on this?In Re: has the details on the latest setback for the city of Anaheim in their quest to overturn Arte Moreno's name change. An appeals court has refused to grant an injunction, meaning the name that shall not be spoken here stays for now. You thought this story went away, didn't you? Well, it hasn't. And as Kyle says, don't be so sure that the Angels are going to win this in the end. Despite the seemingly endless stream of defeats for the city, the actual issue of the name and the lease language have yet to see open court. The city still has a solid case. Comments:Unless the city of Anaheim gets lucky and ends up with some Birkenstock-wearing, smoke-dopin' activist judge who reads tea leaves better than he reads the written word, they don't stand so much as a one-legged cat's chance of covering its mess on a frozen pond. It doesn't take Clarence freakin' Darrow to figure out that if a contract holds one side to name a team "Anaheim Angels" then the contract says, "Team to be renamed 'Anaheim Angels.'" But sadly for the city of Anaheim, whatever idiots signed that contract on their behalf only got a written commitment that the team will be "renamed to include 'Anaheim' therein." And guess what? IT CONTAINS 'ANAHEIM' THEREIN!!! Know what else? If the Angels get lucky enough to have the case heard by a hard-core, letter-of-the-law conservative judge, he can VERY easily rule that the contractual obligation on the part of the club was 100% fullfiled at sunset on the day the team was renamed "Anaheim Angels." That's because the City of Anaheim signed such a LOUSY contract for their puroses that it doesn't even stipulate how long the name should remain!!! Sorry to anyone who thinks otherwise, but contracts are WRITTEN and SIGNED for a reason. And if anyone thinks they might find themselves a few years down the road trying to get some court to divine the "spirit" of a contract in a way that ignores the written WORD of the contract, the time to think about it is BEFORE your signature goes onto it. BOTTOM LINE: The city of Anaheim is dead in the water. If the city council has a handful of brain neurons to share amongst themselves they won't spend another taxpayers' dime pursuing this ridiculous, lost cause that they brought on themselves in the first place. Taxpayers are paying for Curt Pringle's wounded pride. Worse case scenario for the team is that they get the hippie judge and then win on appeal. Uh huh. Well thank you for the enlightenment, Judge. I would ask if the both of you were experts in contract law, except I know that no such thing exists. So unless you're both soothsayers, I would be careful about speaking in definitives on the subject. Without getting into the dirty the contract says that the team name will include the city name. Sure, inside the four corners of the contract LAAA is ok, but other valid theories of contract law says this is bunk. This isn't a clear case. Before you call this a slam dunk ask yourself, would you say this is a slam dunk case if the Angels called themselves the "Anaheim is full of crack-whores"? Because the only required term is the city name, that would be valid by the language of the contract, but I think most of us would agree that that would be the type of interpretation of the contract only a lawyer could advance... Come on. If you need to make up a ridiculous thing like that, then you must think it's a slam dunk too. It's a perfectly reasonable name -- just like the existing Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino that adopted its name for the EXACT same reason Arte changed the Angels' -- and Ontario-Los Angeles Airport. And have you guys even read the contract? There's not much to the section that defines terms with respect to the naming aggreement. In fact, therein lies Anaheim's problem. It's TOO damn unambiguous. My first expectation is that Anaheim will back off on the lawsuit route and try to negotiate something. But if they don't, watch and see. The court will only say, "Sorry kids. The court will not write a contract that didn't exist and make someone adhere to it." Come on. If you need to make up a ridiculous thing like that, then you must think it's a slam dunk too. It's a perfectly reasonable name -- just like the existing Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino that adopted its name for the EXACT same reason Arte changed the Angels' -- and Ontario-Los Angeles Airport. And have you guys even read the contract? There's not much to the section that defines terms with respect to the naming aggreement. In fact, therein lies Anaheim's problem. It's TOO damn unambiguous. My first expectation is that Anaheim will back off on the lawsuit route and try to negotiate something. But if they don't, watch and see. The court will only say, "Sorry kids. The court will not write a contract that didn't exist and make someone adhere to it." Didn't tax payer money fund the improved stadium? If that is the case, and I think it is, regardless of what the contract says it wouldn't take a "hippie, activist" judge to rule in favor of the city. A libertarian-leaning judge might see it their way too. Regardless, I don't think the city has all that much of a chance. It's sad too, now we're just another LA team. actually, I did read the contract. I was in the court while the appeal for the injunction was heard. It doesn't have to be an extreme example, just one that neither party could have anticipated given the extrinsic evidence at the time. While that doesn't mean that the City of Anaheim is protected from all poor construction (contracts are read as construed against the drafter) it does mean that they can have a reasonable interpretation of their meaning at the time of construction. Anaheim will have an opportunity to show that they couldn't have anticpated the contract being construed that way based off of trade practices and original course of dealing and can make a good case of it. The Angels on the other hand have to stick to a form of contract analysis that may produce absurd results and that does hurt them. Hmmm... It's true the city still has a case, but keep in mind the team will have played an entire season as "LAA" by the time the trial rolls around in November. That could definitely hurt the city's chances, imo. It could affect the jury's willingness to sympathize with a name change rollback. The city does have in Andrew Guilford a solid lead attorney. He has been involved in some pretty high-profile stuff and has appeared on 60 Minutes. - Chris Couple of things, guys. ONE) "Didn't tax payer money fund the improved stadium?" That's about as irrelevant as a thing can get in this case. You're suggesting that a judge allow a logical fallacy -- an appeal to pity -- to sway his reading of the wording and intent of a contract! The interpretation of a legal document should be no different whether the stadium improvements were funded by Donald Trump or by emaciated little blind orphans in wheelchairs. TWO) Anaheim will have an opportunity to show that they couldn't have anticpated the contract being construed that way based off of trade practices and original course of dealing and can make a good case of it. Right. Just as they'll be given an opportunity to explain away that SPECIFIC REJECTION, IN WRITING by the Disney folks in response to the Anaheim people's WRITTEN PROPOSAL to alter the wording of the contract to read, "...to be changed to 'Anaheim Angels.'" What judge is going to overlook the fact that Anaheim entered into the contract despite not getting that requested change in the contract? It's all in evidence guys. And most of this stuff is viewable at anaheim.net -- except the link to the PDF of the actual contract, which anaheim.net has curiously seen fit to remove. Right. Just as they'll be given an opportunity to explain away that SPECIFIC REJECTION, IN WRITING by the Disney folks in response to the Anaheim people's WRITTEN PROPOSAL to alter the wording of the contract to read, "...to be changed to 'Anaheim Angels.'" in exchange for language that said the team name shall include the city name. The rejection was the reference to the order and specific form of the naming. I don't think you could reasonably construe it as a rejection of the city name being included (because it ultimately was) or done in anticipation of adding a second city name, which Disney never indicated interest in doing in any draft or proposal of the contract I've read. Oh well! Looks to me like the more things that were NOT discussed by either side and/or NOT stipulated in the contract, the more it just looks like the city failed to cover their collective ass with respect to what the contract would ensure them, and ended up signing what they NOW consider a lousy contract. We won't settle anything here. But I'm confident that if Anaheim is dumb enough to pursue it in court to the bitter end, all they'll accomplish -- aside from throwing taxpayers' money down a hole and providing fodder for their opponents in future elections -- will be to learn a bitter lesson in the importance of making sure their interests are protected in the VERBIAGE of a contract so that they don't find themselves down the road begging some court to divine some etherial "SPIRIT" of the damn thing. We'll see. And $30 million rarely buys naming rights to a ballpark. (Edison Co. payed $50 million!) It CERTAINLY would take a hell of a lot more than that to buy naming rights to the team itself. The city of Anaheim knows better than anyone that that's not what the deal was. Disney is famous for Goofy, but not for BEING quite THAT goofy. Once again I must thank Vecino for setting us all straight. I don't know if you're aware of this, but Vecino was actually in the room when the Angels signed their lease with the city of Anaheim! Hell, since he's obviously the world's foremost expert on contract law, he probably wrote the damn thing! Richard, with all due respect, I'm stating facts that are easily, independently verified. If the best you can do is caricature my statements like a mocking adolescent, then you really only magnify the fact that you haven't offered a fact-based and reasoned rebuttal. With all due respect to you, Vecino, you're stating opinions as facts. You don't know how a court will rule on this issue - no body does, and lawyers have come down on both sides of this issue in equal numbers. When considering contract law, courts do consider the spirit of the contract. If they rule that the spirit of the clause in question was for the team to be known as Anaheim, and it is decided that name change violates that spirit (which it most certainly does, as evidenced by the fact that every media outlet drops "of Anaheim" for brevity – exactly what Moreno was betting on) they can find the Angels in violation of terms. Those are facts, Vecino. Am I saying it's going to go down that way? No - because, like you, I don't know what's going to happen in a court of law. The only difference is that I'm not going to insult everyone's intelligence by pretending to be an expert on a subject where I am clearly not. And the $30 million dollars was not "to buy the naming rights for the team." The $30 million was an investment that the city made in an attempt to make the stadium nicer (and therefore improve the city's image and potentially increase tourism or other investments into the city). One of the stipulations of the contract whereby Anaheim invested $30 million in the stadium was that Anaheim be featured in the name. Disney signed a contract that essentially gave them an extra $30 million dollars to improve the stadium, while they were required to sign a 30-year lease and feature Anaheim as part of the team name. This has nothing to do with any other naming rights contract because those are signed completely independently (and besides, it doesn't matter what other people sell naming rights for, if the Angels wanted to sell stadium naming rights tomorrow for $5, they could...as long as that is allowed in the contract that they have with the city, of course). Damn, Richard! Are you serious? Do you REALLY think that I simply OPINE the figures that Anaheim and Edison Co. invested? Do you think that I simply OPINE what that contract saysd and that Anaheim is dragging the Angels to court arguing that for $30 million they were entitled to lock an MLB franchise into the name "Anaheim Angels"??? These aren't opinions. They're facts! What are you, a Democrat? Sorry. That was vicious. I would like to respond to that tangled mess of words and punctuation you just left (that is, if I managed to correctly decipher it. If not, I apologize in advance). If you were to go back and read this thread, you will find that I never once made the argument that the 1996 renovation has anything to do with this current dispute. Nor have I ever claimed that the city of Anaheim somehow purchased the naming rights to the team. My only argument is that the lease – a lease negotiated in good faith between the city and the club – can be construed any number of ways that you have decided to ignore, wholesale. Perhaps you have me confused with someone else... |
