Benny the Bilge Rat reports on the latest chapter in sailing’s greatest case of grand larceny
The sleeping giant awakes! The taxis on West 44th Street must have been honking their horns extra loud. Something has woken the Board of Trustees of the New York Yacht Club from their slumber. They’ve finally realised that the America’s Cup is being stolen from them.
Commodore Clare Harrington today announced that the club has asked for a legal ruling as to whether the self-styled “America’s Cup Partnership” is in breach of the AC Deed of Gift. That partnership, between the defender and challenging syndicates, was created back in October last year. It’s apparently taken the NYCC all this time – 10 months! – to discover that Grant Dalton & Co have appropriated the Cup for themselves.
It’s not as if the ACP tried to hide their intentions. From the outset, they declared the partnership’s stated purpose was “to unite competing teams under a shared governance and commercial structure”. No “friendly competition between foreign countries” for these guys. No way. The Cup is now a valuable commodity, so they just took it and declared they held all its commercial rights. As outrageous acts of appropriation go, this was surely in the Donald J Trump class.
For almost a year they looked to have gotten away with their larceny, but the law might yet catch up with them.
The 1887 Deed of Gift is still the legal foundation of the Cup. As such, it is what the lawyers call a “charitable trust instrument”. So, any dispute over its interpretation or operation must be decided by the New York Attorney General’s Charities Bureau. That body, in turn, is supervised by the Office of the New York State Attorney General. Which is where the NYYC grandees have now applied for a ruling.
Snowball’s chance in hell? At least to this old rodent, they would seem to have a strong case. They argue that the Deed never contemplated a permanent authority and that it specifies the Cup governance is a matter for the Defender and Challenger of Record only. Further, they point out that the rules of the ACP contravene the “mutual consent” provision of the Deed. To any fair-minded observer that should already be enough to put the standing of the ACP in serious doubt.
In essence, this belated response from the New York Yacht Club is an attempt to protect the original Corinthian spirit of the Cup. Three cheers for that. It is not an attack on individuals or syndicates. Rather, it challenges ACP’s right to exist, and the legality of the rules the Partnership invented for itself.
The NYYC have finally responded to the most fundamental principle of this 170-year-old competition: the America’s Cup is a sporting contest, not a commercial entity to be traded.
The Rat
