Oakland Council To Vote May 1 On Possible NFL/Raiders Suit

The Oakland City Council will vote May 1 on whether to go forward with a lawsuit against the NFL and the Raiders over the club’s planned move out of the city, said Jim Quinn, a lawyer whose firm, Berg & Androphy, would likely to be one of the lead firms in the case. Quinn described the chance the council will vote to sue as “good” because of the staying power of a similar suit brought by St. Louis over the relocation of the Rams from to L.A. The Raiders plan to leave Oakland for Las Vegas in '20. Quinn’s firm was retained by a Raiders’ booster group last year, and briefed the council last month on the merits of a suit. The key legal argument for Oakland is the NFL ignored its own relocation bylaws, and in so doing violated antitrust law, said Quinn, who has had waged lawsuits against the NFL in the past. Oakland’s claims would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.