Raiders Question Intent of Memo

The NFL, in the midst of a contentious lawsuit with the Oakland Raiders, has sent a memo to all its teams that both announces revisions in the schedule of next week’s league meetings in Palm Desert and implicitly uninvites club owners to the session.

But the league insisted Friday the changes are not rooted in concerns that several owners--on the Raider witness list for the trial in Los Angeles Superior Court--might be subpoenaed to testify in the case.

Judge Richard Hubbell, speaking from the bench last week with jurors out of the courtroom, had said to the lawyers, “I don’t want to send sheriffs down to serve people in Palm Springs.”

Raider attorney Joseph Alioto, told of the memo that was issued Thursday by the league office, said the NFL was trying to blunt “the pursuit of truth.” The league denied that assertion.

The dispute arose as the Raiders’ $1-billion lawsuit against the league wound to the end of a second week with testimony from former NFL President Neil Austrian. Echoing Commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s testimony, Austrian said that in 1994 and 1995, the end of the Raiders’ tenure in L.A., there was no “adequate” stadium for professional football in the Los Angeles area.

Later, he qualified that assertion. Asked again by Alioto if he agreed that there was no adequate stadium, Austrian replied, “On a long-term basis, I agree, yes.”

The stadium issue is key to the Raider case. The team alleges the league interfered with a proposed $250-million stadium at Hollywood Park, leaving owner Al Davis with no choice but to move back to Oakland, the team’s original home.

The Raiders also claim they still own the L.A. market for NFL play. The team is asking for more than $1 billion in damages. The league denies wrongdoing.

The league memo outlines changes to the annual meeting, set this year for the Marriott Desert Springs resort, and says the changes are necessary because the “heavy time demands” of the Raider trial have occupied Tagliabue and other league executives and made it “very difficult” to prepare for the meeting.

In sum, the memo says, “no votes will be taken on any business matters.” And meetings of most of the league’s regular committees “will not be necessary.”

So what’s still on the agenda? League spokesman Joe Browne said the league will discuss but not vote on realignment--made more pressing by the arrival in 2002 of the NFL’s 32nd team, in Houston.

The memo adds, “Notwithstanding these changes in the meeting schedule, attendance by working club executives and head coaches will continue to be critical.”

The memo says nothing about owners. “Working club executives” means general managers, presidents and coaches.

The Raiders want to call to the witness stand several owners, among them Bud Adams of the Tennessee Titans and Art Modell of the Baltimore Ravens, both of whom played key roles in the league’s review of the Raiders’ Hollywood Park proposal. The Raiders also want to call Wellington Mara of the New York Giants, who wrote a letter to Tagliabue on June 2, 1995, complaining of “a long list of Raider atrocities.” The letter has already been shown frequently to jurors.

On the stand, Tagliabue described Mara as “the conscience of the league,” at least “in some respects.”

It’s not clear under California law whether an NFL owner attending a meeting in Palm Springs could be summoned to testify in a civil suit being tried in a Los Angeles courtroom. The law says a potential witness must be “a resident within the state at the time of service.”

Without live testimony, the Raiders will have to read aloud to jurors, hour after potentially numbing hour, from depositions--interviews of various owners conducted under oath--taken in recent months.

When notified Friday of the league’s memo, Alioto could barely believe it.

“We demanded that [the league] produce these people to testify live,” he said. “They refused.

“To have them live is important to achieve,” through cross-examination, “what’s described as the ends of justice. The pursuit of truth--that’s how you get it.”

Browne said the NFL is not trying through the changes in the meeting schedule to protect its owners or duck the law.

Noting that Tagliabue, Carolina Panther owner Jerry Richardson and Cleveland Brown President Carmen Policy had already testified, Browne said, “If we were trying to avoid having our owners testify while the Raiders are presenting their case, we’ve done a poor job of it.”