Seattle Files Lawsuit Against Sonics To Hold Them To Full Lease
The city of Seattle filed a lawsuit yesterday against the Sonics seeking to enforce the team’s KeyArena lease through 2010, according to a front-page piece by Jim Brunner of the SEATTLE TIMES. The suit, filed in response to Sonics Owner Clay Bennett’s move seeking arbitration to break the lease after this season, “also attempts to block Bennett from taking the dispute to arbitration, arguing that only a court can nullify the lease.” Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr said, “Too often, pro sports teams have run over local governments and gotten their way with them. Today we are standing up and saying ‘no.’ We have an agreement. We are going to enforce that agreement.” While Bennett claimed the team lost $17M last year in part due to KeyArena having the NBA's lowest capacity, the city indicated that the losses “have more to do with the team’s spate of losing seasons,” and the suit “traces the Sonics’ downfall to the 1998 NBA lockout, which diminished fan interest in professional basketball.” The suit also mentions that Bennett has turned down offers from local investors “who wanted to buy a piece of the team, and cites comments from part-owner Aubrey McClendon that ‘we didn’t buy the team to keep it in Seattle.’” Former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton (R-WA), who is repping the city, said that Bennett’s attempts to get a $500M publicly-financed arena in Renton were the “kinds of demands that from my perspective were almost designed not to be met” (SEATTLE TIMES, 9/25). Carr said that he “expects this to be ‘a difficult bit of litigation,’ but said the primary issue is simple.” Carr: “I can’t imagine a set of facts where money damages were an adequate remedy for a city that went so far to provide a place for a professional team to play.” Gorton said that the city “has ‘one simple request,’ that the Sonics fulfill the full 15 years of the lease.” However, in Seattle, Greg Johns notes a successful suit “wouldn’t do anything beyond binding the Sonics to KeyArena though September 2010” (SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, 9/25).
AND THAT'S FINAL: In Seattle, Bill Virgin notes while binding arbitration is “obscure” to most people, it has “become central to resolving disputes between businesses." An advantage of binding arbitration is that it “can provide a faster, more efficient and cheaper resolution than going through a jury trial.” However, the SEC notes when the process is over, the decisions “are final and not subject to appeal. If you are unhappy with the result, you cannot go to court to try again” (SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, 9/25).
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