n the span of a few hours on Tuesday, a milestone was achieved in local sports jurisprudence: in Manhattan, Madison Square Garden sued to make sure the Jets don't build a stadium on the Far West Side of Manhattan, and in New Jersey, the Giants sued the state that it accuses of standing in the way of a new stadium.

That double play was preceded by another one last month, two suits separated by six days: first, New Jersey sued the Giants to figure how not to pay the full $300 million to renovate Giants Stadium; the Jets then went to court to accuse the Garden (and its parent, the ubiquitous Cablevision) of wielding monopolistic power to prohibit pro-stadium commercials from being shown unfettered in the marketplace.

Can't anybody here build a stadium without accusations of breached contracts, sham bidding processes, tortious interference and illegal anticompetitive conduct?

"When you're dealing with big bucks, high-prestige venues, the political system is almost always inadequate to deal with it, so it ends up in court," said Douglas Muzzio, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College.Woody Johnson, the Jets' owner, and the Mara and Tisch families, who own the Giants, are learning in their bruising battles that it isn't easy to build a stadium or arena in New York or New Jersey. Not one has been built since 1981, when Continental Arena opened. Now, its tenants are leaving: the Nets to Brooklyn (where a basketball arena designed by Frank Gehry will probably open before a new football stadium does) and the Devils to a proposed arena in Newark.

"This is the post-Moses, post-Penn Station New York," Muzzio said, referring to Robert Moses, the master urban planner. "Building is difficult and made intentionally so, and sometimes that's good."

Johnson has been publicly absent from the Jets' stadium war, but it was easy to sense the simmering anger that John Mara, the Giants' executive vice president, felt at a news conference on Tuesday toward Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey and the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority for stalling his plans.

"We believe we've lost any chance of having a new stadium finished for the 2008 season," he said, then added that the cost of the stadium had risen by $50 million in the past month, to $750 million, because its earliest completion date is now 2009. "At some point we'll have to decide if this deal is still appealing to us."

But what's a $50 million jump in your costs compared with the escalating price tag for the Jets' stadium? Up it has gone, from $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion to $2 billion and beyond, and everything after the $600 million public subsidy is to be paid by the team in myriad ways. For now that means a Jets contribution of at least $1.4 billion, and $210 million to pay the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to develop the stadium above the agency's railyards, a discount bid that Cablevision alleges was part of a sweetheart deal that swayed the unanimous vote to the team.

But the Jets deserved a victory after 36 years without a Super Bowl, Dan Marino's faked spike, Rich Kotite's coaching and Herm Edwards's clock management.

If the Jets and the Giants have a sense of history, they might look back with dewy eyes at an early heyday of local sports construction. From 1911 to 1925 Ebbets Field, the fourth Polo Grounds, Yankee Stadium and the third Garden were built.

They, of course, defined state of the art for that era, the very issue that divides the Giants and New Jersey. The sports authority's chief, George Zoffinger, thinks Giants Stadium is modern, with great sightlines for fans, and is happy to make periodic and reasonable improvements as the team's lease requires.

The team believes state of the art is not what it has but what the Philadelphia Eagles possess at Lincoln Financial Field and what the Green Bay Packers have at renovated Lambeau Field.

And if the Giants can't build their own stadium for $750 million, which they'd prefer, the team wants the state to pay for $300 million in renovations. The state, which sued in hopes that a state court will agree that it is not liable for the full cost of renovation, soon after authorized the developers of the Xanadu hoop-de-do complex to start building, in violation of the Giants' lease, the team alleges.

And the games of trans-Hudson chicken continue.