ST. LOUIS — Disputes over documents and depositions are dominating the legal playbooks of those facing off in one of the region's closely watched court cases.
Despite an ongoing pandemic that has severely handicapped the court system, the civil trial pitting St. Louis and St. Louis County against the city's departed professional football team and the rest of the National Football League remains set for Oct. 25.
With fewer than nine months before kickoff in St. Louis Circuit Court, lawyers on all sides are squabbling over whom they may depose and what documents are required in a scramble to meet an April 2 deadline to produce all evidence in the case.
On Thursday, a somewhat perplexed Circuit Judge Christopher McGraugh — before granting the NFL's wish to compel testimony from Explore St. Louis President Kitty Ratcliffe and Chairman Andrew Leonard — rubbed his forehead and acknowledged he recently had to re-read the entire 2017 lawsuit to remember what it's all about.
"I'm sort of at a loss," Mcgraugh told lawyers during a video hearing. "I thought I knew what this lawsuit was about but after I read your briefs, I wasn't so sure."
Download PDFPDF: St. Louis, St. Louis County lawsuit filed against NFL
The 52-page lawsuit filed in 2017 by St. Louis, St. Louis County and the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority claims the NFL violated its own relocation rules by allowing the Rams to leave St. Louis. The plaintiffs are seeking upward of $1 billion, according to Gerard "Jerry" Carmody, a St. Louis lawyer representing the NFL. The suit claims the Rams' departure from St. Louis cost the city millions in amusement, ticket and earnings tax revenue.
The league’s relocation rules were established in 1984 to avoid antitrust liability and direct teams to work to remain in their home communities. They say teams can't move unless the relocation policy is satisfied.
After 21 seasons of the Rams playing in St. Louis, Kroenke won NFL approval to return the team to southern California, using as his escape clause a first-tier provision in the 1995 stadium lease at the former Edward Jones Dome. The clause required the state of Missouri, city of St. Louis and St. Louis County to renovate the dome — at a cost of about $700 million — up to the level of the league’s “first tier,” or top eight stadiums.
The St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission, also known as Explore St. Louis, runs the Dome at America's Center where the Rams played. Ratcliffe and Leonard, who aren't parties to the lawsuit, resisted the NFL's request for their testimony by challenging the relevance of the 2013 dome arbitration that sided with the Rams.
Nick Lamb, a lawyer for the CVC, said the CVC had no involvement in stadium talks and was merely the dome's landlord "while the Rams played out the string here in St. Louis."
"Their job is not to get in this fight," said Lamb. "They don't have a dog in this hunt. They are not a plaintiff."
Carmody argued that some 3,600 requested documents from the CVC, as well as testimony from its leaders, are critical to defending claims of bad-faith negotiations with St. Louis years ago.
Carmody argued that the 1995 lease is central to the Rams' story in St. Louis and that despite court rulings excluding evidence about the lease or the 2013 arbitration, doing so now would undermine the NFL's defense.
"The CVC chose not to honor the agreement that it had in 2013 and knew at the time the consequences of that decision would be that the Rams would likely relocate," Carmody said.
In a nearly three-hour hearing Thursday, McGraugh ultimately granted the NFL's request to depose Ratcliffe and Leonard, but only closer to the April deadline. Left unresolved were contentious scheduling conflicts for deposing former NFL vice president Eric Grubman, one of several football executives who held town hall sessions with fans in 2015.
Dozens of football executives, team owners and other officials have been subpoenaed for depositions ahead of the April deadline including NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Rams chief operating officer Kevin Demoff and Kroenke, who has already sat for a deposition. Lawyers said City Treasurer Tishaura Jones, who sought to block a subpoena to testify, is scheduled to be deposed Friday. Jeff Rainford, a chief aide for former St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay is set for Feb. 24.
Thursday's discussion with the judge also ventured into the feasibility of holding a jury trial this fall in St. Louis amid a pandemic. The judge proposed a potential 2022 trial date but preserved the October timeframe in hopes that trials resume by then. No jury trials have been held in St. Louis Circuit Court since March.
