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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Law Experts Say Seahawks Will Lose Suit But That Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Team Will Play In Seattle

Associated Press

If it comes down to a court battle between King County and the Seattle Seahawks over the validity of a broken lease, experts say the football team will lose.

At issue are dueling lawsuits filed by the team and the county after Seahawks owner Ken Behring announced he was moving his team to Southern California.

Behring maintains the county has failed to maintain the stadium as “a first-class facility,” and that the Kingdome would be dangerous in a major earthquake. But the county disputes Behring’s claims and says the lease commits the team to play in the Kingdome until 2005.

“All the Seahawks’ plans to move to L.A. assume that they’ll be able to get out of their lease, and to me that’s not clear at all,” said Jim Gray, assistant director of the National Sports Law Institute at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, who predicts the Seahawks will wind up staying in Seattle.

Gray is among national experts in sports and contract law who told The News Tribune of Tacoma that the county is likely to prevail in court unless Behring produces convincing evidence for his view.

The experts’ supposition comes after reviewing the lease and court filings and with provision that it’s impossible to know how a court would rule.

Gary Roberts, a Tulane University law professor who was the NFL’s attorney from 1976-83, said he expects judges will be “pretty sympathetic” to the county.

“It is quite likely a local judge is going to immediately understand the economic and political stakes for the community,” he said.

A hearing is scheduled for March 27 before the state Supreme Court on whether the case should be assigned to King County Superior Court, where the county filed, to Kittitas County courts, where the Seahawks filed.

In April, a hearing will be held to determine whether the team should be barred from moving until the trial is held, probably this summer.

Roberts said the Seahawks hurt their case by moving to earthquake-prone Los Angeles on grounds the Kingdome is seismically unsafe. “It makes you look foolish, even if in the end it ends up being a good argument.”

Behring has said he has an expert’s report that says it would cost at least $90 million to strengthen the Kingdome to withstand a major earthquake.

The county counters with a July 1995 study that said the dome is well-designed to resist an earthquake. Seismic improvements would cost only $15 million, say county officials, who contend Behring’s complaints are just a ploy to get a stadium that makes him more money.

Thomas Bowers, an Indiana University business law professor, who heads the business school’s Sports and Entertainment Academy, said facts will decide the issue.

“If the Kingdome is threatening to collapse and the county has waited two years to do anything about it, there is probably a material breach of the lease, and the Seahawks have grounds to cancel,” he said. “If there is no real risk to anybody while the improvements are made, they won’t.”

Gray said both sides will likely have to present evidence about what constitutes a “first-class” NFL stadium at a time when cities around the country are adding various bells and whistles to their arenas.

The judge may see “first-class” as an evolving standard that requires the county to make improvements, Bowers said. But he questioned whether a judge would rule the county must match the improvements of top-notch facilities elsewhere.

University of Washington contract law professor John Haley agreed.

“The question is: Does ‘first-class’ mean that because the Kingdome has gone out of style you have to tear it down and build a neoclassical stadium?” Haley said. “I think the county has the better part of that argument.”

James McCurdy, a Gonzaga University law professor and chairman of the Law & Sports division of the American Association of Law Schools, said the lease provides “no easy way out” for either side.

Even if the judge determines the Kingdome needs renovations, the professors agreed the court could hold Behring to the lease while ordering the county to make improvements or pay Behring damages.

But the court wouldn’t necessarily order Behring back into the concrete stadium he loathes. Roberts said courts prefer to award monetary damages rather than force people to act unwillingly.

“The legal system has an assumption that people shouldn’t be bound to provide services they don’t want to,” Roberts said.

Whatever happens, “the idea of having everything back the way it was, with the same owner and the same players in Seattle, is very unlikely,” Haley said. “There’s a high likelihood of payments to the county, the team may be back for another season, and maybe there will be a local buyer.”

For that reason, it’s in both sides’ interest to negotiate a settlement, McCurdy said.