Brooklyn Gets Its Revenge -- Ruling Favorable To Bar With `Dodger' Name

NEW YORK - It took 35 years, but Brooklyn got a little payback.

In a ruling sure to be a hit with brokenhearted baseball fans, a federal judge ruled that the Los Angeles Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn in 1958 and cannot stop a restaurant there from using the team's nickname.

The decision yesterday by U.S. District Judge Constance Baker Motley came after a four-year legal battle that followed the 1988 opening of The Brooklyn Dodger Sports Bar & Restaurant in the Bay Ridge neighborhood.

"We won and we won big as we deserve to," said Richard Picardi, a part-owner of the bar that seats fewer than 100 people. "They just thought they would grind us down. They figured we were little guys in Brooklyn."

Robert Kheel, National League counsel, said the league was considering its options, including an appeal.

The dispute had torn open old wounds in a city that never quite got over losing the Dodgers to the West Coast in a move that ultimately led to the creation of the New York Mets.

Thirty-five years after the defection, Motley decided the team no longer had exclusive rights to the Brooklyn Dodgers copyright. The Dodgers and the commisssioner's office had joined in the lawsuit against the restaurant to force it to change its name.

"It was the Brooklyn Dodgers name that had acquired secondary meaning in New York in the early part of this century, prior to 1958," the judge wrote. "It was that cultural institution that Los Angeles abandoned."

Motley called it one of the "most notorious abandonments in the history of sports." The judge noted that Los Angeles did not resume formal use of the Brooklyn Dodgers trademark until 1981, when it licensed a company to merchandise T-shirts.

Picardi said the restaurant's owners were disappointed at the long legal fight because they had tried hard to avoid conflicts when they named the restaurant. They searched the trademark files for "Brooklyn Dodger" and found none existed.

The restaurant did not disguise its pride for the old Dodgers. It sold T-shirts and memorabilia and decorated the business with cartoons depicting the "bum" character associated with the team.

Picardi said he will celebrate the decision with a large party and will likely bring back T-shirts and memorabilia put away after another federal judge granted the Dodgers a temporary favorable ruling a year ago.

Then, the 52-year-old owner will relax with his customers and recall the days that inspired the restaurant to begin with.

"Brooklyn was another world in the '40s and '50s when I grew up. Brooklyn was heaven," Picardi said. "They took it away once and now they couldn't take it away a second time."