Luzerne County’s lawsuit aiming to gain half of the $14.6 million sale of the Moosic-based Triple-A minor league baseball franchise might be moving closer to a settlement.


Attorney Frank J. Tunis Jr., the lawyer representing the Lackawanna County Stadium Authority, said he and lawyers for Lackawanna and Luzerne counties will likely meet soon again for another mediation session to attempt a resolution.


They last met in June with a mediator and negotiated all day long, but it could not reach a final agreement and agreed to more mediation, Tunis said.


“I don’t think we were too far apart,” he said. “It just didn’t get done.”


Acting Luzerne County Manager C. David Pedri, the county solicitor at the time, didn’t dispute Tunis’ characterization of the mediation session, though he described it differently.


“We did make some progress and we’re still open to the idea of mediation,” Pedri said.


Tunis and Pedri declined to discuss the potential settlement terms. Efforts to reach attorney James A. Doherty Jr., who is defending Lackawanna County, were unsuccessful.


Mainly because all sides seem to have decided to wait until how the November elections shook out, another mediation session hasn’t happened, Tunis said. Voters chose new commissioners in Lackawanna County and new county council members in Luzerne.


With the election over and the new year beginning, he expects mediation to resume in the almost 5½-year-old lawsuit, he said.


For now, the suit remains pending in Lackawanna County Court.


The suit grew out of a 2007 stadium authority decision that gave SWB Yankees — a company owned half by the New York Yankees and half by Mandalay Baseball Properties — an option to buy the authority’s baseball team, then still known as the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, now the RailRiders.


When the stadium authority bought the team two decades earlier, Luzerne County put up $1 million to help buy the franchise, and its officials believed the original purchase agreement entitled Luzerne to half the profits — $314,471 — between 2007 and 2009, and half the sale price to the Yankees,


$7.3 million.


The stadium authority formally sold the team to SWB Yankees in April 2012 and spent the money to build a new $43 million baseball stadium off Montage Mountain Road in Moosic. Mandalay has since sold its share to SWB Investors.


A judge ruled Luzerne isn’t entitled to any of the 2007-2009 profits, but the question of whether Luzerne deserves half the sale money remains unresolved.


 


bkrawczeniuk@timesshamrock.com