The Oakland Raiders have suffered yet another loss, and the NFL season doesn't start for several months. The California Supreme Court has ended a lawsuit against the NFL worth about $1.2 billion.
The ruling upholds a 2001 verdict in "The Oakland Raiders v. National Football League," a conspiracy case in which the Raiders claimed the NFL interfered with a deal the team had made to build a new stadium. The Raiders lost that trial by a 9-3 verdict, but won a ruling in Superior Court for a re-trial. The NFL subsequently appealed and the appeals court ruled in favor of the League. The Supreme Court concurred stating that the Superior Court judge did not provide details of the jury misconduct and without that support they would not order a new trial.
In the 2001 ruling , jurors decided the league did not interfere with the Raiders building a new stadium and since the team didn't own a right to site a team in LA, they were not entitled to compensation. The team had argued that once they left the city, they freed up the rights to site a team in LA to the NFL and should be compensated for it.
However, one juror claimed he hated the Raiders and would not vote to award Al Davis any money because he had once lost a bet on the team. Another juror, a lawyer, apparently encouraged the jury to throw out the judge's interpretation of the law and use hers. The juror declarations were conflicting and the team did not submit any other evidence to support their appeal.
The Raiders legal staff bemoaned the ruling as "incomprehensible."
The Supreme Court would usually review cases on a standard of "abuse of discretion" standard, but in this instance the court used an independent review, because the Superior court justice who ordered the retrial did not adequately state his reasons for doing so. The judges comments did not comply with Code of Civil Procedure that the court "specify the ground or grounds" on which it grants a new trial within 10 days and the courts reason or reasons for granting the trial on each ground.
The court explained that that requirement is strict and described the issue in the present case as narrow because the intent of the code would be "frustrated" if it abuse of discretion standard were used.
The misconduct allegations go to a one juror who claimed he would never vote to award damages to Al Davis because he had once lost a bet on the team and "hated" the Raiders.
The Raiders also recently ended over 10 years of disputes with the Oakland Coliseum Authority when they lost an appeal in a case in which they had originally won $34 million by a jury.
