The Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors are in talks with a pair of out-of-town law firms looking to sue the NFL and the Raiders for upward of $500 million over the team’s impending move to Las Vegas.
“It wouldn’t cost us anything,” City Councilman Noel Gallo said Tuesday.
In a nutshell, the law firms approached the city and county with the idea of filing an antitrust suit against the league and the team. Lawyers from the firms — Berg & Androphy in Houston and Weil, Gotshal & Manges of New York — recently flew to Oakland and asked local officials to add up how much they expect the Raiders’ exit will cost taxpayers.
It’s quite a bit.
“We still have that (nearly $80 million) bond debt for renovating the stadiumto bring the Raiders back” from Los Angeles in the 1990s, Gallo said. “Plus there are the losses from future seasons that the team would have played here and the millions that we spent trying to put a stadium plan here.”
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“I think they have a valid lawsuit, and they ought to pursue it, because it’s the only way to get the attention of the NFL going forward,” said Jim Quinn, an attorney at Berg & Androphy who has successfully sued the league over both player free agency and the 2011 players’ lockout.
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