We’re approaching the 10th anniversary of the Chicago Cubs finally ending their 108-year World Series drought, which, according to baseball folklore, began when a team owner ordered a tavern-keeper’s malodorous goat out of Wrigley Field. As this year’s Cubs prepare for another postseason run, the organization may be tempting fate once again. The target this time is Rooftop by the Firehouse, otherwise known as Wrigley View Rooftop—the last independent building-top overlooking nearby Wrigley Field. In federal court, the Cubs are seeking to establish once and for all that a team can stop neighbors from profiting from a view into an open-air stadium.

For my money, this is one of the more underrated legal stories in sports. As anyone who’s ridden Chicago’s Red Line knows, the Wrigleyville neighborhood boasts some extraordinary vantage points into the Cubs’ home ballpark—so extraordinary, in fact, that the City of Chicago long ago recognized the historical and cultural significance of the rooftop experience, blessing a permitting framework that allowed neighboring property owners to host patrons during events at Wrigley Field.

The Cubs’ former owner, the Tribune Company, never fully embraced the arrangement, but finally came to terms with it through a 2004 settlement under which the team agreed not to obstruct rooftop sightlines and, for 20 years, cooperate on marketing in exchange for royalty payments from the rooftop businesses.

Alas, the truce didn’t last. After the Ricketts family acquired the team in 2009, the Cubs began pursuing plans that threatened to obstruct views from neighboring rooftops, including the installation of massive video boards and other outfield structures. At a 2014 fan convention, Tom Ricketts compared the rooftops to a neighbor who watches a premium channel through the window and then charges others for the privilege: “Then you get up to close the shades, and the city makes you open them.” Realizing what they were up against, some rooftop owners quickly sold out. Others sued, and after a series of setbacks, they, too, eventually capitulated.

Well, everyone except Aidan Dunican. The Irish immigrant carpenter, who arrived in Chicago in 1981, bought property across from Wrigley, secured permits, and built Wrigley View Rooftop around 2000, is now the last holdout. On game days, his business sells building access, plus unlimited food and drinks. His refusal to sell out or sign a new agreement has produced a lawsuit that poses a surprisingly novel question: Can a sports franchise use unfair-competition law to control what paying customers see from private property next door?

That question may travel well beyond Wrigleyville—think balconies over Formula One street races, hospitality tents bordering PGA Tour events, chalets perched above ski-racing courses. Curse or no curse, this won’t be the last team to try.

Both sides have now filed sprawling summary judgment motions that recount the colorful history of the rooftop wars, the Cubs’ yearslong campaign to bring the surrounding rooftops under their control, and, finally, the collapse of negotiations after the expiration of the 20-year agreement. Dunican, who has contended that he built his business in plain view of everyone, now argues that the Cubs’ proposed terms have all but guaranteed that he would lose money. In 2024, the team erected screens that partially blocked his view into Wrigley Field. Nevertheless, he says the customers keep coming.

As for the legal claims, there is a fairly straightforward trademark dispute centered on allegations that Wrigley View Rooftop continued using Cubs marks and language suggesting an official affiliation with the team after the parties’ relationship ended. On that front, the Cubs appear to have the stronger hand.

The trickier and more consequential fight, however, concerns whether visibility itself can function as a quasi-property right. The Cubs have argued that Dunican has been commercially exploiting their very product—their lawyers insist that a live baseball game is not merely something that happens inside Wrigley Field, but a commercial entity whose value they alone are entitled to capture. Dunican has countered that he’s simply selling access to his own property and charging customers to look at what the Cubs choose to put on public display. Dunican says that property owners have always been free to profit from lawful vantage points.

Although the Wrigley case tees up a novel dilemma about sight lines, the sports industry has been wrestling with variations of the free-rider problem for well over a century. The closest analogue may date all the way back to 1886, when the Detroit Wolverines of the National League sought to stop a neighboring property owner from charging fans admission to watch games from the roof of his barn. The Michigan Supreme Court refused to issue an injunction. Nearly 140 years later, Dunican has dusted off that precedent and placed it at the center of his defense.

The Cubs would rather the court evaluate the dispute through the lens of Pittsburgh Athletic Co. v. KQV Broadcasting Co., the landmark 1938 decision holding that a baseball club owns a protectable property interest in the commercial dissemination of its games—the legal ancestor of “any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game” disclaimers. Dunican’s lawyers counter with Baltimore Orioles Inc. v. Major League Baseball Players Association, the 1986 appellate ruling often cited for the proposition that state misappropriation law can’t re-create rights that Congress declined to grant under copyright.

Whatever happens here is likely to be cited far beyond Wrigleyville—by the rooftop restaurant overlooking a NASCAR street race, the homeowner perched above a college football stadium, or the hotel terrace with a commanding view of another major sporting event. For generations, courts have recognized property rights in broadcasts, recordings, trademarks, tickets, and copyrighted works. Whether they’re prepared to recognize property rights in sight lines is a different question altogether. If the Cubs prevail, the decision may be remembered not as the final chapter of the Wrigley rooftop wars, but as the moment in which a court drew a legal distinction between seeing something and selling it. Cubs fans are just praying that Wrigley View Rooftop doesn’t end up being this century’s billy goat.

Thanks, Eriq. I’ll be back with more from Philadelphia tomorrow.

John