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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA RECORD

Saturday, November 2, 2024

San Diego judge dismisses St. Louis Rams copycat NFL relocation lawsuit

Lawsuits
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Karraker | Facebook

An $800 million lawsuit against the National Football League (NFL) concerning the San Diego/Los Angeles Chargers was dismissed last month.

After oral arguments, San Diego Superior Court Judge Carolyn Caietti cited the statute of limitation as an impossibility to proceed.

The chargers left San Diego in 2017, but the plaintiff in Ruth Hendricks v the National Football League did not file suit until January 2022.

As previously reported in the Southern California Record, the complaint was patterned after St. Louis v NFL, which resulted in a $790 million settlement to avoid trial before a jury of hometown St. Louisans alleging that the NFL deceptively left Missouri for California.

But, Randy Karraker, 101 ESPN Radio morning host who resides in St. Louis, doesn’t believe that Dean Spanos, chairman and owner of the NFL’s San Diego/Los Angeles Chargers franchise, truly wanted to leave San Diego.

“Spanos, until the day he left, wanted to stay and gave San Diego every opportunity to put together a plan for a facility,” he said.

Factors that differed from the St. Louis litigation and that contributed to the dismissal include the following arguments.

San Diego secured substantial concessions, including a large termination fee in the event of the Chargers’ relocation

St. Louis did not receive a relocation or large termination fee, according to Karraker.

"I don't think that St Louis interests would have accepted a nominal relocation fee or a termination fee,” he said. “If San Diego got any money at all, that would certainly explain why a case would have been dropped or would have been dismissed because you can't double dip.”

Statute of limitations

“In St. Louis, it was still emotionally a hot button issue. even for a judge who lives here,” Karraker told the Southern California Record. “There was still a lot of anger and if that anger and angst, which probably wouldn't be as hot in San Diego because people are pretty laid back in California, had cooled a little bit, the San Diego judge may have looked at it more rationally than Judge McGrau did here in St. Louis.”

While the Rams allegedly never negotiated in good faith with the city of St. Louis, Spanos was on record multiple times as saying he wanted to keep the team in San Diego

“There were multiple votes to help build a stadium that the Chargers supported and although Spanos could have gone with the Rams to Los Angeles right away, he took another year to try to get things going in San Diego,” Karraker added.  “If the St Louis offer had been on the table for the Chargers, I guarantee that they'd still be in San Diego.”

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