Cleveland is not letting the Browns go quietly.
Litigation aimed at thwarting the team’s move to a domed stadium in suburban Brook Park continues to percolate through the legal system. Adam Ferrise of Cleveland.com provided an update earlier today.
The current skirmish relates to efforts by the city to get a speedy ruling on the question of whether the team’s current lease allows it to even commence plans for relocation before the term of the arrangement ends. The team has characterized the tactic as an attempted “ambush” in a court filing.
The team’s lawyers also dubbed the argument that it can’t make plans for its next playing location “preposterous.”
“The lease nowhere says that the Browns are barred for 30 years from considering alternative playing arrangements after the 30 years have come and gone,” attorney Anthony White wrote on behalf of the team. “The Browns are confident that the evidence will show that the [l]ease was designed to keep the Browns at Huntington Bank Field for 30 years, not to hold the team hostage forever.”
That’s obviously an overstatement of the city’s position. The argument is that the team can’t commence plans for leaving until the lease ends. That ultimately will be a matter of contract interpretation.
If, of course, the lease prevents the team from looking for an alternate location until the lease expires, it would require the team to do, at a minimum, a short-term extension while it finds a longer-term venue. This would delay the opening of the Brook Park stadium by multiple years.
The city also contends that changes to Ohio’s Art Modell Law, which was revised earlier this year to allow relocation within the state, does not apply to existing relocation efforts. Earlier this week, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost provided a statement that was filed in the team’s separate federal lawsuit against the team that, in his opinion, the updated Modell law applies retroactively, which would (if accepted by a court) clear the path for a move to Brook Park.
The litigation between the city and the team is unfolding while a separate hurdle to the project lingers. The Ohio Department of Transportation has denied a building permit for the Brook Park stadium based on the conclusion that the height of the proposed stadium impacts flight paths at the nearby Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
The legal entanglements obscure the broader question of whether it makes sense for the Browns to not play in downtown Cleveland. It just seems odd for the Cleveland Browns to play not in Cleveland but in some suburban location. It’s just as odd as it would be if the Pittsburgh Steelers were to build a new stadium in Bridgeville or Canonsburg or Cranberry Township or one of the various surrounding locations that aren’t, you know, Pittsburgh.