Thirty years after the Browns left Cleveland because they couldn’t get a new stadium, the Browns are attacking the law that was passed to keep the Browns from leaving Cleveland in order to get a new stadium.
Dueling pieces of litigation are pending over the Art Modell Law, aimed at preventing a repeat of the team leaving town.
Via the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Browns have asked to amend their pending lawsuit. It’s a basic procedural step that is routinely granted.
The Browns continue to attack the Modell Law as unconstitutional. The team’s overriding goal is to move to suburban Brook Park.
The Modell Law requires the team to provide six months’ notice before leaving town, with residents having a chance to buy the team.
Although it’s important for the city and the team to coexist, the lawyers are talking tough — as lawyers often do.
“Our actions in court are intended to ensure that the city’s irresponsible and baseless attempt to apply the Modell Law to the Browns does not slow our momentum to build a world-class stadium right here in Northeast Ohio for the Browns, our fans and the entire Ohio region,” Haslam Sports Group’s chief administrative officer and general counsel Ted Tywang said in a statement issued to the Plain Dealer.
The Browns filed suit in federal court. The City of Cleveland filed suit in state court. The Browns view federal court, where the judge is appointed for life and not subject to an election, as the preferred forum. The city sees state court, where the judge is accountable to the ballot box, as the better place for the case to be resolved.
Via the Plain Dealer, the Browns have attacked the city’s lawsuit as “legally meritless and fiscally irresponsible.” (That’s how the game is played; every civil defendant sees every case filed against it as meritless or frivolous.)
The team also has accused the Browns of attempting to “run out the clock so the Browns are unable to bring the Brook Park stadium to fruition by 2029, and so hold the team, its fans and the community hostage to an inferior alternative and the political whims of city managers.”
Even if the Browns manage to circumvent the Modell Law, they still need to strike a deal for public financing for a domed stadium at Brook Park. And they need to make it happen without the issue being put out to vote, because the citizens of very few if any cities, counties, or states would vote at this point to devote taxpayer funds to the construction of stadiums for sports teams with values approaching, if not exceeding, $10 billion.
