Owner Stan Kroenke and the Los Angeles Rams are going to great lengths to make sure a current lawsuit surrounding their relocation from St. Louis back in 2016 isn’t made public.
Joel Currier of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Thursday that the Rams and the NFL will appeal a lower-court decision all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
This stems from the Missouri Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday that settlement negotiations between the team and plaintiffs would be heard in a St. Louis courtroom rather than through arbitration.
“Kroenke’s lawyers said the Missouri high court’s ruling will cause ‘irreparable harm’ to the Rams by denying the team’s ‘bargained-for right to resolve this case outside of court in an efficient and cost-saving manner.'”
The money aspect of this will be laughed off by the nation’s biggest court. Though, there is an argument that can be made that the NFL and its teams as well as the host cities are bound by collective bargaining.
“The lawsuit — the biggest of four filed by fans and government entities after the team’s exodus — was filed 15 months after the Rams left,” the report noted. “The dome authority, St. Louis and St. Louis County sued the Rams, the NFL and 31 other NFL teams and owners alleging breach of contract, fraud, illegal enrichment and interference in business by the Rams and the NFL, causing significant public financial loss.”
Based on the details of the lawsuit, a strong argument exists that this should be decided in arbitration. Even then, one has to wonder what both the league and the Rams are trying to hide.
On a completely different note, doesn’t SCOTUS have bigger fish to fry?