The CEO of the quintessential Seattle company should step in and save the oldest living Seattle sports franchise, now that he has a chance:
The emails that have come to light today show that the effort to keep the team here was not made in good faith. Not only were Bennett and his co-owners talking amongst themselves about moving the team as early as April, they reached out to Oklahoma City officials in June.
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“However,” he added, “the contract here was between Bennett and the previous owners–who might not want to set aside the agreement.”
And there’s the issue. The aggrieved party here is Howard Schultz and his team of owners. They may be peachy-keen about how this whole thing has gone down.
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“The fact that Bennett and Company seemed not to have been acting in good faith during the negotiations of the contract (not just during its performance stage), however, raises other issues as well. It means that his lack of good faith goes to the very formation of the contract–because it vitiates [ed: law talk for ‘invalidates’] the quality of consent given by the other side… Misrepresentation and fraud make the contract invalid.“
Howard, you screwed up. Now that other locals want to own the team, its time to make good.
Those e-mails represented a hope the Sonics wouldn’t stay in Seattle, not a laid out plan. In public, Bennett did precisely what he was supposed to. He paid for an arena plan (about the same price as the Orlando arena and the same architect), he engaged Margarita Prentice as his spokesperson and contact in the Senate. As majority leader, she should have had a lot of political clout and never once in public did he say anything the would imply he wasn’t willing to stay if an arena was built. Whether he would have been happy about staying is immaterial. He would have had to stay. Seattle dropped the ball when they ignored him and refused to even consider building an arena. They never even allowed the public to vote on the issue. The politicians in Washington are more to blame than Clay Bennett. Wouldn’t we like to see their private e-mails? I think Bennett’s lawyers should subpoena them.