ST. LOUIS — If the case makes it to trial next year, the relocation lawsuit against the National Football League, the Rams and club owner Stan Kroenke will take place in St. Louis.
After a closed-door hearing Tuesday during which lawyers for the NFL, Rams and Kroenke sought to move the closely watched suit elsewhere, Circuit Judge Christopher McGraugh reopened his courtroom to the public and rejected that request.
The judge questioned why the defendants in the 2017 lawsuit over the football team’s departure to Los Angeles waited until months before the January 2022 trial date to seek a change of venue. He said they failed to prove prejudice against them and that most of the news articles submitted as examples of extensive, unfair pretrial publicity were from years ago and primarily opinion pieces that were not necessarily fact-based.
“What you’re asking me to do is presume jurors have an interest that I don’t know they have,” McGraugh told Robert Haar, a lawyer for the defendants. The judge added that the purpose of jury selection is to eliminate people with obvious biases.
Haar argued that no St. Louis juror could be impartial because they would all have some interest in the outcome. The plaintiffs represent St. Louis and St. Louis County, and will be asserting that they deserve damages for the loss of civic pride, jobs and economic development the Rams' exit brought the area.
The judge disagreed, noting that the defendants’ previous arguments — that the region’s tepid support of the football team led to its departure — seem at odds with their latest claim that all city residents automatically have an interest in the outcome of the case.
The lawsuit filed in 2017 claims the NFL broke the league’s relocation rules by allowing the Rams to leave St. Louis after the 2015 season, and misled the public about its intention of staying here. The plaintiffs claimed the Rams’ departure cost the city millions in amusement, ticket and earnings tax revenue. The suit alleges breach of contract, fraud, illegal enrichment and interference in business by the Rams and the NFL, causing significant public financial loss.
In June, the NFL, Rams and Kroenke urged the judge to reject claims that NFL team owners broke league rules and lied to the public about the move to L.A. They said the NFL’s relocation guidelines were not a contract with St. Louis and that team owners were free to rely on their “business judgment” to advance the NFL’s “collective interests.”
Before Tuesday’s ruling, McGraugh closed his courtroom to the public to allow some arguments on moving the trial out of St. Louis. The defendants said they needed to make their arguments behind closed doors so as not to “exacerbate” what they see as unfair publicity of the case before trial. Attorney John Hessel of Lewis Rice, representing the Post-Dispatch, argued against closing the courtroom in support of the public’s right of access to the courts.
After about an hourlong closed hearing, the judge reopened the courtroom to allow several journalists to hear the parties’ responses to some of his questions.
The judge said some of the more recent news stories about the case were of the NFL, Rams and Kroenke’s own making — in particular, a three-hour hearing Aug. 25 in which the defendants sought to have the case dismissed and rehashed many of the same legal arguments against the lawsuit’s claims. McGraugh has not ruled on that motion to dismiss the case.
Some jury summonses have already been sent to St. Louis residents in advance of the trial.
