City of Anaheim v. Angels Baseball LP is a lawsuit filed in Orange County, California Superior Court by the city of Anaheim, California against the owners of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Major League Baseball franchise, concerning the team's official name. The lawsuit and a related political and public relations battle sought to reverse the team's official name change from Anaheim Angels to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, which the city characterized as a breach of the team's lease on the city-owned Angel Stadium of Anaheim. The city was unsuccessful, as both a trial jury and an appellate court ruled in the team's favor.
The Angels franchise was founded as the Los Angeles Angels in 1961 and played under that name until 1965, when it changed its name to California Angels upon its move from Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium to the new Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). In 1996, the Angels and the city of Anaheim agreed on a new lease that called for the city to fund renovations to Anaheim Stadium, and called for the team's name to contain the name "Anaheim". The following year, the team's official name changed again to Anaheim Angels.
In 2003, the team was sold to Arturo "Arte" Moreno. Less than two years later, the team announced it was changing its name to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, an attempt to market the team as being from Southern California—Major League Baseball's second-largest media market—rather than just Orange County. The "of Anaheim" phrase was included to comply with the terms of the 1996 lease. Anaheim city officials immediately denounced the change, characterizing it as a breach of the lease, even though it was in technical compliance. Likewise, many fans denounced the change, as many Orange County residents consider Orange County to have its own identity separate from Los Angeles.
A preliminary injunction filed by the city seeking to immediately reverse the name change was unsuccessful, and the Angels began playing under the new name for the 2005 season.
Read more about City Of Anaheim V. Angels Baseball LP: Lawsuit, Aftermath
Famous quotes containing the words city of, city, angels and/or baseball:
“I counted two and seventy stenches,
All well defined and several stinks!
Ye Nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“The language of the younger generation ... has the brutality of the city and an assertion of threatening power at hand, not to come. It is military, theatrical, and at its most coherent probably a lasting repudiation of empty courtesy and bureaucratic euphemism.”
—Elizabeth Hardwick (b. 1916)
“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 16:19-22.
“I’ve gradually risen from lower-class background to lower-class foreground.”
—Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist. Baseball the Beautiful, Links Books (1970)