Dodgers Owner Wanted Wife `Out of Office,' McCourt Divorce Witness Claims
Aug. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Lynn Soodik, a family law attorney, talks with Bloomberg's Stephanie Stanton about the divorce trial of Jamie and Frank McCourt. McCourt's claim to be the sole owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers was challenged today by his estranged wife. (Source: Bloomberg)
Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt last year wanted his wife, then the team’s chief executive officer, “out of the office,” a witness testified at the couple’s divorce trial.
Leah Bishop, a California estate planning lawyer, testified today in Los Angeles Superior Court that Frank McCourt, in a July 2009 meeting, told her that having Jamie McCourt as the Major League Baseball team’s CEO had created a “dysfunctional structure” and that she was “lacking rationality.”
“There was a disconnect with reality,” Frank McCourt said, according to Bishop, the first witness in the 11-day trial before Judge Scott M. Gordon.
At issue is a 2004 marital property agreement the couple signed when they bought the Dodgers and moved to California from Boston. Frank McCourt says the agreement makes him the sole owner of the team and the judge must decide whether it’s valid.
Jamie McCourt, 56, filed for divorce Oct. 27, six days after her husband fired her as the baseball team’s CEO. Frank McCourt, 57, accused her of insubordination and of “inappropriate behavior with regard to a direct subordinate.” The couple had been married for 30 years.
Bishop, a witness for Jamie McCourt, testified yesterday that Frank McCourt had said during a 2008 meeting that the postnuptial agreement wasn’t supposed to exclude his wife from ownership of the business assets and that he wanted Bishop to “fix it.” Frank McCourt wanted to make the team and the couple’s other assets community property, Bishop said.
The following year, Frank McCourt declined to go through with those plans, Bishop said.
Cried and Complained
At the July 2009 meeting, Frank McCourt cried and complained about the couple spending $800,000 a year on security and about out-of-control estate managers, Bishop testified today.
The $421 million acquisition of the Dodgers from Fox Entertainment Group Inc. closed on Feb. 13, 2004. Frank McCourt claims the post-nuptial agreement after the purchase makes the team his separate property. He says his wife wanted the agreement to protect herself from the financial risk he took on when he bought the Dodgers with $330 million in loans.
Forbes earlier this year valued the Dodgers at $727 million.
Jamie McCourt says the agreement was intended only to preserve an arrangement the couple used in Massachusetts to shield their family residences from business creditors by listing them in her name. The Dodgers, like the houses, remained their shared property, she contends.
Bishop testified yesterday that Jamie McCourt had a “fundamental misunderstanding” in 2008 of what the marital property agreement entailed under California law and that she didn’t know that she wasn’t entitled to a share of her husband’s separate property in the event of a divorce.
The case is McCourt v. McCourt, BD514309, Los Angeles County Superior Court (Los Angeles.)
To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net.
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