UCLA unlikely to shake off Pasadena lawsuit over attempt to leave Rose Bowl

LOS ANGELES (CN) — The University of California, Los Angeles, likely won’t be done any time soon with a lawsuit brought by Pasadena over purported plans to abandon the iconic Rose Bowl as the venue for its football team’s home games.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Joseph Lipner issued a tentative decision that mostly overruled UCLA’s demurrer to the city’s breach of contract lawsuit. The judge didn’t issue a final ruling at a hearing Tuesday morning in downtown LA but took the matter under submission.

While UCLA said in February it will be playing its 2026 home games at the Rose Bowl, as it has since 1982, Pasadena seeks a court order to force the Bruins to play their home games there until June 30, 2044, per their contract. The city claims it has committed to $200 million in renovation to the stadium based on its belief UCLA would remain there.

Under the terms of the contract, an attempt to terminate the agreement is considered a breach.

Jeremy Smith, an attorney for UCLA, argued at the hearing that the city’s claims rely on privileged communications between the parties based on anticipated litigation.

“The other side is relying on statements from outside counsel,” Smith told the judge. “That’s the basis for their lawsuit.”

If the judge were to allow the case to proceed based on these privileged communications, it would discourage parties to have frank discussions in potential legal disputes because they could end up in a complaint, Smith said.

However, according to Nima Mohebbi, the attorney for Pasadena and the Rose Bowl Operating Company, the letter he sent to UCLA in March of last year — regarding the rumors going around that UCLA was planning to move its home games to SoFi stadium in Inglewood — fell short of imminent litigation.

“The letter said, please step back from the brink and let’s talk about it,” Mohebbi told the judge. “RBOC had no intention to sue, but it was given the runaround.”

According to Pasadena in its complaint, the city learned early last year that UCLA was in talks with executives at SoFi Stadium, the massive, state-of-the-art football stadium completed in 2020 by Kroenke Sports and Entertainment.

“This news was shocking not only in light of UCLA’s contractual obligations, but also because of UCLA’s betrayal of the community that helped catapult it to national recognition,” Pasadena argues in its lawsuit. “For more than four decades, UCLA’s football program and the Rose Bowl Stadium have been closely intertwined.”

Tuesday’s tentative ruling also denied the university’s attempt to bring an anti-SLAPP — a strategic lawsuit against public participation — motion to strike because, the judge said, UCLA had waited too long to try this method for ending a lawsuit quickly insofar as it is an attempted to curtail protected speech.

The judge, however, agreed with UCLA that Pasadena couldn’t bring a claim for promissory estoppel — based on UCLA’s purported assurances last year it wasn’t leaving the Rose Bowl for the foreseeable future — because under California law, only the Board of the Regents of the University of California, not UCLA, can make binding promises.

The tentative order also overruled Kroenke Sports and Entertainment’s demurrer to Pasadena’s claim that billionaire Stan Kroenke’s sports empire is liable for tortious interference with contractual relations.

Mark Holscher, an attorney for Kroenke Sports, argued at Tuesday’s hearing that Pasadena shouldn’t be permitted to proceed with a claim that, according to the city’s complaint could amount to $1 billion in damages, based on a breach of contract that hasn’t occurred.

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