The Metropolitan Transportation Authority got socked with a second lawsuit yesterday in connection with its vote to sell the New York Jets the right to build a football stadium on Manhattan’s West Side.

The lawsuit, which was filed by three nonprofit groups and the city’s largest union of transit workers, charged the MTA with failing to secure an adequate price for the development rights of its West Side rail yards and for creating a timeline that made it “impossible” for interested parties to craft an offer.

The court filing comes 12 days after the owners of Madison Square Garden took similar action. MSG, which had submitted its own offer to build at the 13-acre site in an effort to fend off a competing facility for sports and entertainment, charged that the process was rigged to favor the Jets. MSG’s lawsuit argues that it should have been awarded the project because it offered $410 million in cash up front, compared to the $210 million – which has since been increased to $250 million – promised by the Jets.

An attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, one of the four petitioners who filed yesterday’s suit, tried to distance the group’s argument from the ones made by MSG. The attorney, Gene Russianoff, who is a party to the suit, told The New York Sun the MTA should reject both bids because neither provided the agency with enough money.

“Their suit is premised on ‘our bid is better than their bid,'” he said of the Garden. “We think all of the bids should be thrown out and that they should start all over again.”

Mr. Russianoff said the MTA has no chance at credibility when it “cries poverty” and lobbies Albany for more money to fix subways and buses, then agrees to a deal that undervalues one of its most significant assets.

The other plaintiffs on the suit are Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union; the group Common Cause, and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign which, like the Straphangers, is a transportation advocacy group. The groups said that because the MTA gave only 27 days for developers to make offers and draft plans, the process was unfair. They are requesting that the court oversee a new round of bidding.

A spokesman for the MTA, Tom Kelly, said yesterday the agency agreed to wait until the matter is argued in court. State Supreme Court Justice Herman Cahn, who is overseeing both suits, has scheduled a May 3 hearing and expects to rule by May 10.

The lawsuits could create a problem for Mayor Bloomberg, who has made the Jets’ 75,000-seat domed stadium as the linchpin in the city’s bid for the 2012 Olympics. He has said that if the stadium doesn’t receive necessary approval by the time the International Olympic Committee votes on a host city in early July, the city’s prospects are doomed.

Asked about the lawsuit yesterday, a Bloomberg spokesman, Jordan Barowitz, responded by e-mail that the stadium, known as the New York Sports and Convention Center, would create tens of thousands of jobs. “Besides being frivolous,” he said, “the lawsuit robs New York of hundred of millions of dollars in tax revenue for schools, cops and affordable housing.”

Besides court clearance, the stadium still needs approval from the state’s Public Authorities Control Board, which is to meet in mid-May.