The Marlins are "claiming corporate citizenship in the British Virgin Islands in an effort to have a federally appointed arbitrator take over the lawsuit by Miami and Miami-Dade County to recover a share of the profits" from the $1.2B sale of the team to Derek Jeter last fall, according to Douglas Hanks of the MIAMI HERALD. Lawyers representing the team "told a federal judge that at least one corporation that owns part of Marlins Teamco -- the company Jeter and majority Owner Bruce Sherman formed last year to buy the franchise -- is based in the Caribbean." As a result, lawyers argued the dispute with Miami-Dade "should be governed by jurisdictional rules that apply to international disputes." This argument "drew a sharp brush back from county lawyers, who mocked the 'Jeter Marlins' for invoking treaty law in a lawsuit involving a Miami baseball team and the municipal government that owns Marlins Park." If the argument is successful, the Marlins' request would "strip the case from a Miami-Dade judge who has already sided with Miami and Miami-Dade in a preliminary ruling rejecting the arbitration" requested by previous Owner Jeffrey Loria's lawyers from the beginning. If the Marlins are deemed a foreign-owned corporation, a federal judge "could take over and then consider whether to trigger an arbitration clause in the contract the two governments signed" with Loria in '09, to steer public dollars to a ballpark complex that opened three years later. The city of Miami, which owns the Marlins' parking garages, and Miami-Dade county, which owns the ballpark, are "entitled to a share of certain profits from a team sale," but Loria's lawyers claim the "formula for calculating those profits yielded a paper loss" of $140M (MIAMIHERALD.com, 4/10).
