The America’s Cup is back in legal trouble, and this time it’s not even a rival team doing the suing.
A formal complaint filed against the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron in New York has been assigned case number 26-020937 by the New York Attorney General’s Charities Bureau. Filed by former Cup sporting director John Sweeney on February 12 (2026), it names RNZYS as defendant and alleges serious breaches of the America’s Cup Deed of Gift, a permanent New York charitable trust that has governed the trophy since 1857.
Now Thomas F. Ehman Jr. has weighed in. Ehman is no peripheral figure, he has served as executive director of the America’s Cup organisation for both the San Diego Yacht Club and the Golden Gate Yacht Club. In a statement dated March 28, he called RNZYS “without doubt the worst trustee in the history of the Cup” and wants New York authorities to strip them of the trusteeship and hand it back to the New York Yacht Club.
So what’s the actual beef?
The Deed says what it says
The key clause reads, “It is distinctly understood that the Cup is to be the property of the Club subject to the provisions of this Deed and not the property of the owner or owners of any vessel winning a match.”
Ehman and Sweeney’s case comes down to this: RNZYS handed its trustee duties not to its own club but to Emirates Team New Zealand, the racing team. ETNZ then transferred commercial control of the Cup to a newly formed corporation, America’s Cup Properties (ACP), set up, by ACP’s own description, to commercially exploit the Cup.
Two violations, one on top of the other. The Deed is explicit that the Cup belongs to the Club, not to a racing syndicate and not to a for-profit company.
ACP: what is it, and why does it matter?
ACP was formed after the 37th Cup in Barcelona, jointly by RNZYS and the Challenger of Record, the Royal Yacht Squadron. The pitch was continuity, the Cup has always lurched between cycles, with commercial deals built from scratch after each win. Emirates Team New Zealand’s Grant Dalton has pushed hard for something closer to a Formula One model, where commercial rights follow the event rather than whoever happens to win.
But the complaint argues ACP goes well past that. Sweeney says it has replaced yacht-club governance with for-profit corporations that bind every future Cup winner, whoever they are, wherever they’re from, to sail under RNZYS-written rules in perpetuity. The New York AG’s office has reportedly asked RNZYS to respond.
Ehman goes further, pointing out that ACP is run by the racing teams, not the clubs, which he says is itself a separate Deed violation.
What the courts have already said
Because the America’s Cup is a New York charitable trust, no private lawsuit can be filed without going through the AG. The office can investigate, start its own enforcement action, or authorise Sweeney to proceed as a relator, acting on the state’s behalf.
The legal ground here isn’t entirely new. A 1990 New York Court of Appeals ruling, Mercury Bay Boating Club v. San Diego Yacht Club drew a hard line: the Deed’s mutual consent clause lets the parties sort out the details of a race, but it cannot be used to alter the essential nature of the trust or override its fundamental requirements.
Ehman also notes that the only times the Deed has been lawfully amended were two court orders, in 1956 and 1985, both made by petition with AG approval. Everything RNZYS has done since 2017, racing AC75 foiling boats that can’t be measured under any version of the Deed, choosing Barcelona and Naples as venues, building ACP without court authorisation, none of it has gone through that process.
This isn’t just a New York problem
It’s tempting to read this as wounded American pride. The US doesn’t currently have a team entered for the 38th Cup, and if that holds, it will be the first time in 175 years an American boat hasn’t been on the starting line.
But the unhappiness runs beyond New York. Alinghi’s parent club, Société Nautique de Genève, has separately written to RNZYS raising governance concerns, saying Team New Zealand sold something they had no right to sell. For a two-time Cup winner and former trustee to make that accusation publicly is not nothing.
Where this goes
The AG holds the cards. He can act, investigate, hand the baton to Sweeney, or put the letter in a drawer. With Cagliari’s preliminary regatta weeks away and teams already eyeing their Naples shipping dates, the timing is awkward.
RNZYS and Emirates Team New Zealand now have questions to answer that they would rather be ignoring. The Deed of Gift has a long memory and doesn’t care much for commercial arrangements made without its blessing.
