The Jets yesterday turned up the heat in the fight over a proposed stadium for the team on Manhattan’s West Side, filing a lawsuit charging that cable giant Cablevision violated antitrust law by refusing to run its ads in support of the stadium proposal.

The suit also claims that Cablevision’s ownership of Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall, the only two venues in Manhattan that seat more than 5,000 people, is also in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

“We feel we have been harmed,” a lawyer for the Jets, Marc Kasowitz, told The New York Sun. The suit seeks compensation for unspecified damages, although “it is safe to say that for every year the process is delayed it costs much more than $100 million a year,” he said.

The team also announced it has hired lawyer David Boies, who headed the Microsoft antitrust defense team and Vice President Gore’s Florida recount effort, to help handle the suit.

“We consider this nothing more than a desperate publicity stunt by the Jets and their fresh batch of lawyers to try to improperly influence the MTA’s competitive bid process with lies, disinformation and lawsuits that will fail,” a spokesman for Cablevision, Charles Schueler, said in a statement.

The battle over the stadium is escalating in the lead-up to Monday’s deadline for bids for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s 30-acre West Side rail yards. The Jets originally offered $100 million for the land for the New York Sports and Convention Center, as the Jets stadium would officially be known. The team was about to enter arbitration with the MTA to establish a fair market value for the plot when it was eclipsed by a surprise $600 million offer from Cablevision. The MTA has since opened the rail yards to bids, and the Jets are expected to increase their offer while Cablevision is expected to offer a formalized plan for mixed-use development.

According to the plan hatched by Mayor Bloomberg, the Jets stadium is to double as the main Olympic venue if New York is chosen to host the 2012 Summer Games. The International Olympic Committee is to vote on the host city in July, and the mayor has stressed the importance of allowing the Jets stadium deal to go forward before that deadline.

While it is unlikely the suit will be settled before the July deadline, lawyers representing the football team say the suit is still worthwhile.

“We don’t know how long we have been delayed, it is hard to put a benchmark on it because it is still ongoing, but we were close to determining a fair market value through arbitration a month or two ago before Cablevision offered a sham bid,” Mr. Kasowitz said.

Some experts agree with the Jets that Cablevision is in violation of antitrust law.

“There is no private industry that is more antithetical to New Yorkers attitudes of competitive ideas and free speech than Cablevision,” a professor of urban planning at New York University, Mitchell Moss, said. “They maintain a monopoly over venues and now over other viewpoints. The only reason they have survived this long is because they don’t enter competitive businesses.”

“The Jets are tired of being the nice guy, and they’ve decided to stop being polite,” the president of the powerful real estate lobby, the Real Estate Board of New York, Steven Spinola, said.

The Jets suit pits antitrust law against first amendment rights, professor John Coffee of Columbia Law School said. “This will be a fascinating case, and Cablevision will argue that the Jets cannot force them to run ads they choose not to run, just as editorial pages of newspapers are free to choose to write whatever viewpoint,” he said.

The courts generally permit any form of media to reject “whatever form of speech they choose,” he said. It could be argued that cable television is different from other broadcast outlets because it is a utility, thus, it could be compelled to present alternative viewpoints, Mr. Coffee said.

Cablevision has filed its own lawsuit, which alleges the environmental impact statement used for the Hudson Yards rezoning and the West Side rail yards was inadequate, which, if successful, could force the city to re-do the review. This would delay the development of the area and could also force the MTA to delay the leasing of the rail yards to the Jets or any other developer. Oral arguments are set for this morning.