Go with MoFo

by
December 2, 2008

You lawyers in the audience may be curious to hear which law firms are representing which potential owners’ groups in the sale of the Chicago Cubs. If so, AmLaw Daily has you covered:

  • Jeffrey Samuels, a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets, but over the next few months he’ll be focused on another national league team: the Chicago Cubs. That’s because Samuels and his partner, Paul Ginsberg (a Yankee fan, he says), are advising private equity giant Clarion Capital Partners (headed by Marc Utay) in the company’s bid for America’s most lovable losers . . .Samuels says Leonard Baxt of Dow Lohnes in Washington, D.C. is also advising Utay;
  • A source familiar with the proposals says that Morrison & Foerster is representing a second potential ownership group, this one led by Tom Ricketts, current head of the Chicago investment bank Incapital.
  • The third finalist is said to be Hersch Klaff, a Chicago real estate magnate. It is unclear who might be advising Klaff in his bid for the Cubs.

    • OK, two out of three ain’t bad. Especially when one of the two is Morrison & Foerster who, for those of you don’t know, has represented numerous current ownership groups in various bits of business and litigation over the years, and who has also served as baseball’s bad cop in representing MLB’s licensing arm, Major League Baseball Properties, Inc. as it goes after trademark infringers. It was in this latter capacity that, back in 2002, MoFo sent out a bunch of cool cease and desist letters (like this one) to bloggers who dared use team logos in their posts. I don’t hear much about that sort of thing anymore, probably because MLB figured out that you don’t want to threaten the people who give you free advertising.

    Anyway, all good lawyers know the old maxim about how it’s great to know the law, but it’s better to know the judge. With respect to the sale of the Cubs, Major League Baseball and the other owners are the judge. Morrison & Forester knows them well. This, I think, bodes pretty well for Mr. Ricketts.


    7 Comments
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    matt
    16 years ago

    How many of your readers are lawyers or law students?  I’m a 1L at Pitt, and I know I’ve seen plenty of other law students comment here.

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    Craig Calcaterra
    16 years ago

    A lot, Matt.  Part of that is people looking for the word “shyster” tend to find it, part of it that they like to hear a lawyer’s perspective on things.  I think most of it, however, is the simple fact that law students have tons of free time, and lawyers—while busy—are able to structure their schedules more easily than a lot of office folk, thereby maximizing web surfing time.

    Or maybe that just was and is me . . .

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    Andy L
    16 years ago

    I am a 2L at the University of Wisconsin, and I don’t think I ever mentioned it before.

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    Craig Calcaterra
    16 years ago

    Thanks for the update, Pete.  I know that Foley & Lardner—a Milwaukee based firm, natch—has done a lot of work for Selig and (I think) MLB at large.

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    Aaron
    16 years ago

    Coincidentally enough, I’m a 3L at Pepperdine. It’s funny, I can always tell when first year students post, because they say things like, “Equity abhors a forfeiture” or other phrases I haven’t heard in two years.

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    Craig Calcaterra
    16 years ago

    Aaron—those who seek equity must do equity.

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    Pete Toms
    16 years ago

    Good link, thanks.

    The article was updated later in the afternoon, MoFo ( how pretentious of me, I’d never heard of them prior ) is NOT representing Ricketts.

    The only law firm I know associated with MLB is – and I’m gonna get it wrong – Proskauer Rose ( is that right? )  I think they lobby in DC for MLB.

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