Just when you think it’s safe to go back in the sports pages, the divorce drama of Frank and Jamie McCourt reemerges. The McCourts property division battle has centered on the Dodgers baseball team — a team that, like Chicago’s own Cubs, is sitting at the bottom of its division.
The McCourts seemed to have settled things when Jamie agreed to take $131 million in exchange for any claim to the team. As we have discussed in our last two posts, because Frank sold the Dodgers for $1.2 billion a few months after they settled, Jamie now believes Frank deliberately undervalued the team. Not included, she says, was the value of the Dodgers’ regional sports network.
At the hearing, Frank’s attorney responded that the RSN did not exist when Frank filed his asset disclosure. He added that Jamie knew that a new RSN could be worth upwards of $1.5 billion, because Frank’s legal team had provided Jamie and her advisors with documentation of the potential value. Moreover, the first bid came in three months after the McCourts had signed the settlement agreement.
Jamie’s attorney countered that she either did not see the document or did not understand its contents. Apparently, the RSN was listed along with other projects that Frank had given up on. Frank knew, Jamie said, but did not tell her that the team was worth ten times the settlement amount.
The court is expected to rule in early June. For the rest of us, the lesson of the McCourts’ property division dispute continues to focus on the post-nuptial agreement that started it all. Had everyone involved looked the documents over carefully, they would have noticed the discrepancies and corrected them.
But, then, not many of us buy baseball teams in a community property state.
Source: Los Angeles Times, “Frank McCourt attorney: Judge should have no patience with Jamie,” Bill Shaikin, April 24, 2013
