(James Paterson is a lawyer and contributor to BackPageLead. He can be followed on Twitter: @patersonlaw or http://twitter.com/patersonlaw)

It has been somewhat of a dream month for Major League Baseball, the culmination being the iconic St Louis Cardinals crowned as World Series champions.

Both the AL and NL wild card play-off races remained live throughout the entire season, with playoff spots only determined after extra innings in the 162nd regular season games.  These games featured dramatic collapses, comebacks - and even a controversy involving beer and fried chicken.  The Divisional and Championship playoff series featured numerous one-run deciding games.

The World Series was one for the ages, going all seven games, highlighted by Cardinals superstar Albert Pujols' memorable three home run game sandwiched in between some dominant starting pitching. The Texas Rangers were one strike away from clinching their first ever title in Game 6 - twice - before being put to the sword by hometown Cardinals hero and now post-season RBI record holder, David Freese.

While these dramas were unfolding, a nightmare off-field scenario was continuing to haunt another iconic franchise, with the ownership situation of the Los Angeles Dodges being held hostage by divorce and then bankruptcy courts.  However recent developments, and the exercising of some broad Commissioner powers by the MLB - indicate light at the end of the tunnel and a potential new Dodgers owner by Opening Day 2012.

Thanks to divorce proceedings involving current owner Frank McCourt, the exact composition of the Dodgers ownership had been called in to question - Frank's ex-wife Jamie had claimed that the team was a jointly owned marital asset, and thus was 50% owned by her.  After a bitter war waged via press releases and preliminary court proceedings over the past two years, the McCourt's recently reached a settlement.  This has resulted in Frank McCourt needing to locate $130 million to pay his ex-wife, but being confirmed as the sole owner of the team.

While McCourt's divorce confirmed his owner status, it also served to highlight his dire financial difficulties. Evidence uncovered during those proceedings led to the MLB investigating and charging him with diverting $189 million in team revenue for personal use (claims which were strongly denied by McCourt).  Recent media reports have indicated that McCourt has debts and taxes owing to the tune of a further - cue Mike Myers - $1 billion.

As the spectre of insolvency hovered over the Dodgers and McCourt's group of companies, the MLB invoked the Commissioner's "best interests of the game" power to take over the operational running of the team in 2011 after doubts surfaced whether team payroll was going to be met.  The Commissioner's actions placed an MLB executive into the Dodgers' organisation as its financial monitor, with authority to review and overrule any expense of $5,000 or more.  (Perhaps the closest example of this occurring in AFL circles is the AFL sending Alan Schwab and an executive team to manage the Sydney Swans in 1993.)

McCourt's tenure as the Dodgers owner was further clouded during the 2011 season when the MLB rejected McCourt's proposed sale of 17 years of LA Dodgers television rights to a Fox Broadcasting Corporation subsidiary (aka News Corporation).  While the price was speculated to be near $3 billion, reports surfaced that the MLB feared McCourt would use about half of an intended $385 million cash advance to fund his divorce.  (Unlike much of the Australian sporting landscape, MLB teams can individually sell TV and radio broadcast rights locally, providing huge financial advantages for teams in major markets such as NY, Boston, LA and Chicago.)

After the MLB's rejection of the broadcasting deal, McCourt placed the Dodgers into bankruptcy protection, seeking to use the US Bankruptcy Court to approve alternative financing methods to remain in control of the franchise and effectively overrule the MLB's ‘best interests of baseball' power.  It was also possible that a bankruptcy court could rule that the Dodgers be sold to the highest bidder in a pure auction process, undermining the Commissioner's typical ability to vet and approve new team owners or consortiums.

(Thanks to both the AFL and NRL ownership structures being predominately membership / community based, these scenarios are not often contemplated within Australia.  Thankfully, you have to turn your mind back to the days of Sydney Swans and Geoffrey Edelsten, or Skase and the Brisbane Bears for examples of these type of private ownership debacles in the AFL.  Unfortunately more recent examples can be found within the NBL from the Brisbane Bullets and Sydney Kings experiences, or A-League with the Wellington Phoenix.  In the US, the only major sporting team with community and membership links similar to the typical Australian structure is the Green Bay Packers.)

This MLB "best interest" power is quite extreme - when it has previously been used by an MLB Commissioner, US Courts have commented that "[T]he Commissioner has general authority, without rules or directives, to punish both clubs and/or personnel for any act or conduct which, in his judgment, is ‘not in the best interests of baseball' within the meaning of the Major League Agreement". (The "Major League Agreement" is the contract between the team and the league which allows the team to participate in the competition).  As a result it is the Commissioner - not the court - who determines the type of conduct that is ‘not in the best interests of baseball'.

US Courts have noted they won't act to judge the appropriateness of a commissioner's rulings - in Charles Finley (the flamboyant Oakland A's owner) v Kuhn (the then MLB Commissioner) during the 1970s the court stated:

"Standards such as the best interests of baseball ... are not necessarily familiar to courts and obviously require some expertise in their application. While it is true that professional baseball selected as its first Commissioner a federal judge, it intended only him and not the judiciary as a whole to be its umpire and governor."

While a US court will generally not act to second guess the Commissioner, it will impose some fundamental limits on exercising that power- for example, the Commissioner is required have valid authority for their actions under the sporting league's constitution, allow due process to the party subject to sanctions, and act in an impartial and fair manner without prejudging the matter before them.  These are all akin to the ‘natural justice' protocols observed (and occasionally challenged) in tribunals conducted by professional Australian sporting leagues such as the AFL and the NRL.

As the only limitations on this power are essentially procedural, it has often been considered that the ‘best interests' clause provides virtual unlimited discretionary power to the Commissioner.

As a result, it was somewhat of a surprise that throughout the 2011 season it appeared McCourt would continue to defy the league and bring further legal challenges to remain the owner of the team.   However, while these ‘best interests of the game' powers are extremely broad, a challenge of the Commissioner's use in these ownership circumstances is not unprecedented.  Throughout 2009 and 2010, there was a lengthy dispute over the ownership of the MLB's Texas Rangers. Similarly, the Rangers had been placed into bankruptcy protection after some creditors considered the price offered by the MLB's preferred alternative ownership consortium would not full repay their existing debts, and instead wanted an unrestricted public auction. The MLB threatened to invoke the ‘best interests' powers to choose an ownership with which it was comfortable, and eventually the US Bankruptcy Court supervised a public auction of the franchise, albeit offers needed to have MLB approval. As this was a negotiated result, the powers of the Commissioner vis a vis the Bankruptcy Court was not fully determined.

In addition to those legal roadblocks, the MLB Constitution also contains provisions in which league owners such as McCourt waive the right to bring a legal action against the Commissioner (or other clubs for that matter), unless they had been denied basic due process (see above) or agreed internal rules had failed to be followed.  Finally, MLB is - quite curiously - exempt from the US anti-competition laws.  This means that McCourt would not have had strong grounds to contend that collusion between the league and clubs, which should have then prevented the MLB from forcing a sale of the team.

Until last week, the MLB was still facing the nightmare scenario of a protracted dispute with McCourt.  The league had attempted to have the Bankruptcy Court order a sale due to McCourt's financial mismanagement, while McCourt's attorneys were claiming that the MLB's pre-emptive action to take control of the team and reject the television broadcast deal was unreasonably forcing a fire sale of the team.  Given McCourt's legal history, the prospects of the 2012 Dodgers appeared to be in limbo, despite having a talented roster containing a nucleus of young All-Stars.

However, in this past week McCourt and the MLB have entered into a settlement under which the parties have agreed for the auction process to be ‘court supervised', under which it is expected to follow a similar process to the recent Texas Rangers sale, with all bids to be prior approved by the MLB.

The Dodgers have not been the only US sporting team facing financing issues.  Given the cheap credit available in the pre-GFC era, some prominent US sports franchises have been heavily loaded with debt, recently leading to forced sales.  Examples include the Chicago Cubs and the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes, although the Cubs sale was at least able to be negotiated without the threat of interruption by the Bankruptcy Courts (selling for a record $845 million).  Other iconic franchises, such as the New York Mets, have had less success in negotiating sales, and we may yet see further Commissioner involvement and clarification on the ‘best interests' powers as a result.

An LA Times report during the season indicated that 9 of the MLB's 30 teams were in breach of the leagues ‘debt servicing' provisions.  Suffice to say, close monitoring by the MLB of its teams financial operations is certainly in the game's best interests. On the plus side, it at least appears that the Dodgers sale will break the record for a baseball franchise, with speculation of a $1 billion price tag for the team, Dodger Stadium and the surrounding parking lots, following a $430 million outlay by McCourt back in 2004.

Being chased by creditors and the Commish, while having financial mismanagement rewarded with an almost three-fold gain? The artful dodger indeed.