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Originally Posted by casualobserver
Let's look at this from the Seattle fan's point of view. Out of town owner buys team, issues threats to move unless $400M publicly financed arena is built in a blighted part of Puget Sound, trades best two players, cuts ties with local media, owner publicly admits they never intended to keep the team in Seattle, limits player appearances and concludes his ownership with the worst Sonics record in 41 seasons. Somewhat strange, that after all of this...the PBC took the time to poll Seattle citizens on how much they value the Sonics. My guess is that PBC conducted no such poll before the acquisition.
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Nice post, but shortened because you seem to go on and on about the ill feelings you have for the PBC. Let's look at it like this -- city leases a car factory to a car manufacturer. Said manufacturer provides thousands of jobs and has a huge economic impact. Manufacturer then is acquired by another company who seeks to consolidate. As part of the consolidation plan, the manufacturer wants to move the operations of this leased plant to Mexico. The city sues to stop the company from doing this citing 'economic impact' and demanding specific performance of the lease.
What, exactly, do you think would happen here?
-- I'll tell you.
The only issue here is cash. With suits in equity, when cash is all that's at issue, there is no equitable remedy (e.g., specific performance) granted. With every single business contract, lease or what have you we have, especially when it is the government acting as the landlord, the performance of the lease is a public benefit and there is always an economic impact. Those things, however, are too amorphous to demand equitable remedies. If this were the case, just about every lease would be subject to specific performance demands upon the ground that the lease provides an irreplaceable economic impact which cannot be replaced by cash damages.
That is why all of this 'hurt feelings' stuff is so important. Seattle's likely best argument, and one which has worked before in a different jurisdiction (I could get a cite, but you probably wouldn't know what to do with it, so just recall the Minnesota Twins situation) is that the team provides an irreplaceable sense of pride to the community and that the public benefit here is not necessarily economic but emotional -- something which absolutely can't be compensated for with cash damages.
The good faith issues come into play because in order to seek an equitable remedy (which specific performance is), a party must have clean hands. In other words, if the City has, itself, interfered with the lease, conspired against the PBC with third parties to devalue the team and force a sale, etc., even though an equitable remedy may be in order, the city would lack clean hands and thus would receive no equitable remedy.
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Second point, the Schultz suit and the "clean hands doctrine." You mention the case is laughable and most believe it barely has legs. I would be interested as to why you believe its laughable specifically as to the sales agreement and side letter between PBC and Schultz.
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Try the actual language of the sales agreement stating that the sales agreement encompasses the entire sales agreement. Try the fact that no one but Schultz even really should have standing to sue? There are too many issues to list here. Fortunately, I don't have to. Our own Doug Loudenback has spent considerable time and energy combing through the relevant paperwork.
Doug Dawgz Blog: April 2008
You can find his work above. I recommend you read it. Apparently you don't have a firm grasp on the legal or factual issues involved here. This will help.