 |
| |
|
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||
|
Bolting the Dome? Vikings reportedly could pay to leave Metrodome earlyPosted: Sunday June 22, 2003 1:49 PMST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- The Minnesota Vikings have a strong chance of breaking their lease at the Metrodome, which would cost the team roughly $5.5 million a year in penalties, the Pioneer Press reported Sunday. Although Metrodome officials have called it a virtual impossibility, three law professors asked by the Pioneer Press to examine the lease that runs through 2011 say a damages clause gives the Vikings a much stronger lease-busting case than the Minnesota Twins, who had no such provision when a judge last year required them to remain at the Dome. Vikings owner Red McCombs did not comment on the article. Whether the Vikings would test their case in court is far from certain. "In sports law, you never know what a court's going to do," said University of Minnesota law professor Shayna Sigman, a sports law specialist. "Courts tend to do what they want." Sigman and the other law professors said the Vikings clearly have much more legal ground than the Twins. "I love football," said Carol Swanson, a business law specialist at Hamline University Law School. "I went into this project hoping that the lease would give Metrodome officials a straightforward mechanism to keep the Vikings here. Unfortunately, that is not the case." Under the contract, the damages provision would require the Vikings to pay the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, which operates the Metrodome, an amount each year that's equal to the average rent, concession, parking and ticket-tax revenue generated by Vikings games since 1982. That annual figure, calculated by the Pioneer Press, would be $5.5 million if the Vikings left Minnesota before next season -- amounting to a total of roughly $44 million for the remaining eight years of the contract -- unless another NFL team replaced them at the Metrodome. Some uncertain areas include revenue from postseason games and rent the commission has rebated to the Vikings since 1999. Also the contract allows the overall penalty to drop if Metrodome revenue generated by other tenants is exceedingly high. The Pioneer Press calculated the averages based on raw data supplied by the commission, which declined to compute the numbers for the newspaper, on the advice of its lawyer. "We don't think that section [the damages clause] is really relevant," said Andy Shea, the commission's attorney. "The commission would not be seeking damages against the Vikings. It would be seeking equitable relief by way of injunction, just as we did against the Twins." The commission argues that the Vikings can't skip town because of the so-called specific performance provision in which the contract says the Vikings shall play in the Metrodome for 30 years. It was a specific-performance provision that Hennepin County District Judge Harry Crump based his injunction requiring the Twins to play at the Metrodome for the remainder of the contract. Still, the three law professors -- Sigman, Swanson and Ed Edmonds of the University of St. Thomas -- say the Vikings' chances of breaking their lease are considerably better than the Twins'. Sigman pointed to the specific-performance wording is weaker than in the Twins' contract and the Vikings have a damages clause for leaving. Swanson, a business law specialist, and Edmonds, a sports law specialist, concurred. Yet Edmonds and the others said a local court might interpret the contract in favor of the state and the fans, anyway -- a legal equivalent of the home-field advantage. Also affecting a possible Vikings departure is a written promise from the NFL -- known as the Rozelle Letter -- that the league would not move the Vikings as long as the contract exists.
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
