Frank McCourt: Wife didn’t want risks of buying Los Angeles Dodgers, being a team owner

McCourt: Wife thought Dodgers purchase was risky

LOS ANGELES — Former Dodger CEO Jamie McCourt didn’t want to take the risk associated with buying the Los Angeles Dodgers six years ago and only started representing herself as a co-owner last summer when her marriage was on the ropes, her estranged husband testified Thursday at their divorce trial.

Frank McCourt spent his third day on the stand in a downtown courtroom, explaining that a postnuptial marital agreement signed by the couple in March 2004 was created to give his wife protection from his creditors, while giving him the ability to run his businesses — one of which was the then-recently purchased Dodgers.

McCourt bought the Dodgers in what he called a risky deal for about $430 million, a majority of which was funded with loans that needed to be refinanced within two years.

“She said to me repeatedly, ‘You can make a billion dollars, you can lose a billion dollars. I want my own nest egg,’” McCourt, 57, said.

His testimony cuts to the heart of the dispute that could decide who owns one of baseball’s most storied franchises. He contends that the agreement gives him sole ownership of the Dodgers, the stadium and the surrounding property, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Jamie McCourt believes the agreement should be thrown out and those assets should be split evenly under California’s community property law.

Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon will have to decide whether the 10-page agreement is valid. He also could order the sale of the Dodgers.

McCourt testified that his wife was more concerned with protecting the couple’s luxurious homes than dealing with baseball matters. He said he didn’t want to spar with her every time a deal was going to be made if she had been a partner.

“The business would have come to a halt,” he said.

Jamie McCourt eventually became the team’s CEO, but her husband fired her last year. In court documents, he accused her of having an affair with her bodyguard-driver and not meeting job expectations.

Jamie McCourt has countered that she never intended to give up her purported share of the Dodgers and that no one told her what she was signing away.

To bolster McCourt’s claims that he was sole owner of the Dodgers, his attorney Steve Susman presented Major League Baseball documents showing his client was such.

His wife apparently knew that as well. In an April 2006 letter from Jamie McCourt to her husband, she said she understood and respected that he was the owner of the team.

“My role is to execute on your vision,” she wrote.

McCourt also said he never told anyone that his wife was co-owner, a claim she began making last summer. Around the same time, McCourt was considering changing the agreement to make the Dodgers community property, but held off for nine months before deciding against it.

“I love my wife. It’s simple as that,” said McCourt, recounting a July 2009 conversation with an estate-planning attorney. “She was trying very hard to convince me to sign the documents. She basically put the marriage on the line.”

To make matters confusing, three copies of the agreement list the Dodgers under McCourt’s separate assets, while three other versions do not. Her attorneys have alleged that a family attorney, at some point, replaced the three versions that excluded the Dodgers from McCourt’s assets with the three that included the team as his property.

Her lawyers have even suggested McCourt knew about the switch and committed fraud, something he vehemently denied Thursday.

“Needless to say, I was extremely upset about that allegation,” he said.

McCourt testified he first learned of the replacement two months ago and ordered attorneys to hire a forensic analyst to see what happened.

Susman showed him the one-page document that McCourt confirmed he reviewed with the family lawyer the day before the couple signed it. On the paperwork, it shows the word “exclusive” crossed out and replaced with a handwritten “inclusive.”

He said Jamie McCourt became upset when she learned that she was being left out of a trust that would transfer ownership of the Dodgers to the couple’s four grown sons. Initial drafts had her as a beneficiary, but McCourt noted under the marital agreement he was the sole owner of the Dodgers and could do what he wanted with the team, according to court documents.

The estate planning attorney in March 2008 noted Jamie McCourt needed to be protected in case of a divorce — the first time, Frank McCourt testified, that he heard “the D-word.” McCourt said he was upset at the “boldness” of his wife’s position.

“To me, you don’t challenge an agreement and stay married,” McCourt said. “It wouldn’t work in our case.”