As we near the end of a year that seems to have been nonstop sports team owners getting everything they wanted and then some, an Ohio judge has dropped some coal in Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam’s stocking: Franklin County Commons Plea Judge Bill Sperlazza issued a 14-day temporary restraining order against the state of Ohio using $600 million in unclaimed private funds toward a Browns stadium, calling it “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Sperlazza ruled that there was a likelihood that the plaintiff in the case — a client named John Reid who says the commonness of the name would make it hard for him to claim an old paycheck before the money was transferred to the Browns on January 1 — could suffer “irreparable harm” if the state was allowed to raid the fund.
The state’s response was, in essence, that it’s all cool, because it has plenty of money to cover kiting checks: Its lawyers said that because there’s $4.8 billion in the unclaimed funds account, and people owed money have until 2036 to file claims, raiding it for the Browns is fine because it’s unlikely to run dry. And if it does, said attorney Aneca Lasley, “If we need to make changes, we’ll make changes” — presumably meaning the state legislature would have to allocate more money to fill in the hole created by the Browns spending, which is honestly stretching the meaning of “we” when you’re an unelected state lawyer.
Ultimately, the unclaimed-funds gambit is mostly a bookkeeping trick: Ohio lawmakers are choosing this particular pocket to take the $600 million from, but they’re still on the hook for paying private creditors back if they file claims. It’s possible it’s an illegal bookkeeping trick, though, in which case the state would have to find another pile of money to throw at Haslam to let him move his team from one part of Ohio to another. (There’s also the issue of whether helping billionaires buy new stadiums is the best use of a suddenly discovered $4.8 billion slush fund, but that’s more an ethical question than a legal one.) We’ll find out more in another 14 days, when there will be another hearing in the case, likely before a different judge, as Sperlazza was just filling in for another judge who was on holiday break. Having to wait an extra week for your $600 million check may not seem like the greatest hardship for a sports team owner, but the way 2025 is going, it qualifies as an unprecedented setback.