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| Friday, May 4 Updated: May 7, 5:50 PM ET Associated Press | |||
LOS ANGELES – Jury deliberations in the Oakland Raiders'
$1.2 billion lawsuit against the NFL had to start over Friday
after the foreman was excused to take a long-planned vacation and
he was replaced by an alternate.
The Superior Court jury was told to ignore its nearly five days
of deliberation on the lawsuit, which claims that in 1995 the NFL
forced the then-Los Angeles Raiders to abandon plans to build a new
stadium at Hollywood Park in suburban Inglewood.
The foreman, a 60-year-old city employee, reminded Judge Richard
C. Hubbell late Thursday afternoon that he had a prepaid plane
ticket to leave town this weekend.
Both sides in the 8-week-old case already knew that.
"I guess we mis-estimated" the time jurors would need to make
their decision, Raiders lead attorney Joseph Alioto said.
NFL spokesman Joe Browne said the foreman indicated he wanted to
remain through the end of the day. But the Raiders made a motion
for him to be dismissed as soon as possible and the judge let the
foreman go at late morning, replacing him with a woman chosen at
random from five alternates.
"I felt that the sooner we did that the better," Alioto said.
"That way, there wouldn't be any pressure on the foreman and
pressure on the other jurors to finish."
"The foreman ... was not optimistic that there would be any
decision until next week," he added.
After the foreman was released the NFL requested a mistrial
ruling, which the judge rejected.
"We believed it was premature to remove him this morning and
also prejudicial," Browne said. "They might well have reached a
verdict today."
"The Raiders' motion now has made the jurors go back and start
from ground zero. We're disappointed," Browne said, but added:
"We wish the juror well on his vacation."
Industry observer David M. Carter said it made "great sense"
to start jury deliberations anew.
Any verdict reached Friday "would have been tainted," with the
losing side arguing jurors compelled by time pressure made a "rush
to judgment," said Carter, who is with the Sports Business Group,
an industry marketing firm.
"I really can't imagine any option other than starting from
scratch," he said.
The Raiders claim the league loaded the deal for the planned
Hollywood Park stadium with unacceptable terms, including an option
allowing a second team to begin play at the stadium in the same
season as the Raiders.
The Raiders, whose revenues at the Oakland Coliseum have been
disappointing since they returned there in 1995, also claim they
own and should be paid hundreds of millions of dollars for the
rights to Los Angeles, the second-largest television market in the country.
Southern California has been without an NFL team since the
Raiders and the Anaheim-based Rams both left in 1995.
The league claims the Raiders never made a firm commitment to
Hollywood Park and only used the situation to get a better deal out
of Oakland, where the team eventually accepted a deal providing $63
million in upfront payments, loans and other benefits.
The Raiders portrayed themselves as oppressed victims of a
league vendetta. In the early 1980s, the Raiders waged a successful
antitrust battle against the league for the right to move from
Oakland to Los Angeles. The team claims the NFL is still smarting
over that loss.
The NFL sought to portray the Raiders as an opportunistic and
greedy team that has bounced back and forth between Northern and
Southern California, with no concern for fan loyalties. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories | ALSO SEE
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