A duo of football fans are seeking to remove the words “New York” from the Jets and Giants team names, claiming in a $6 billion dollar lawsuit that the words are misleading because the franchises play home games in New Jersey.
Class-action lawsuit from Abdiell Suero and Maggie Wilkins, which was first reported by the New York Post, claims the “New York Jets” and “New York Giants” names constitute false advertising, as their shared home stadium is located across the Hudson River in the Garden State.
“MetLife Stadium is located in the swamps of East Rutherford, NJ,” the lawsuit says. “And the Giants, Jets and MetLife Stadium have absolutely no connection whatsoever with the city, county or state of New York.”
The plaintiffs claim that they purchased seats for a Giants game, but only later found out about the New Jersey-based stadium.
“I spent more time traveling to get to the game than the game actually lasted,” 32-year-old Suero told the Post.
The legal maneuver, which is highly-unlikely to succeed, is the second lawsuit filed by Suero — after he unsuccessfully attempted to force the teams to relocate to the Big Apple.
For more coverage of the Jets and Giants, head to amNY.com.
Both teams left Gotham City, first when the Giants moved across the river in 1976, followed by the Jets in 1984.
After years of playing in the Meadowlands, the team moved to their current home at MetLife Stadium in 2010.
MetLife Stadium is a 19 minute drive (in lieu of traffic) from Time Square by car, and just under an hour using public transportation.
The Jets were loosely linked to a Mayor Michael Bloomberg-era plan to erect a stadium for an NFL team and the Olympics on the West Side of Manhattan, where Hudson Yards now stands, but visceral opposition form local activists and politicians squashed that idea.
That relegated both teams to several more years in the Garden State — leaving the Buffalo Bills as the only NFL franchise to play in the state of New York.
Still, MetLife falls within the 75-mile radius granted to NFL teams for the purposes of TV rights.
“[Their] continued use of ‘New York’ as part of their team names is not misleading at all — it merely refers to the teams’ hometown,” the NFL’s lawyers wrote in a legal brief last month seeking to dismiss the lawsuit.
