The cases are maturing. In May, 558 players filed 13 complaints in federal courts in Georgia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Texas and in district courts in Los Angeles and Fulton, Ga. More than 2,200 former players have filed 80 lawsuits against the league since Aug. 17, 2011.
The basic allegations in the lawsuits say the NFL withheld from players evidence linking multiple concussions to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive and degenerative disease that causes headaches, dizziness, dementia, depression and possibly Alzheimer’s disease.
Certainly many of those players filed for and received workers' compensation benefits against their teams. The past several years have seen quite a bit of legal, legislative and public relations maneuvering by the NFL and the player's union concerning jurisdictional issues since many players preferred to use the loose jurisdictional rules of certain states, most notably California, to take advantage of more liberal laws - primarily concerning recognition of continuous trauma injuries.
Player's head injuries fall within that category.
The civil cases appear headed for consolidation and/or class certification status. On April 26, Anita Brody, a U.S. District judge in Philadelphia, ruled that plaintiffs must submit a master administrative complaint by June 8 compiling common statements in the growing number of lawsuits filed at the federal and state level against the NFL.
The timeline for managing this litigation in Philadelphia will take the master case through the balance of the year to get to the first ruling regarding consolidation and class status:
- Plaintiffs must submit the master complaint by June 8.
- NFL and Riddell can file briefs on the master complaint by June 19.
- Motions to dismiss filed in response to the master complaint are due Aug. 9.
- Plaintiffs’ response to the motions to dismiss are due Oct. 10.
- Replies to plaintiffs’ motions are due Nov. 26.
Someone with more expertise on NFL team workers' compensation policies will have to educate me here, but my guess is that most of these policies are high deductible policies meaning that the teams have quite a bit of subrogation potential in these cases and whether or not to join the suits is going to be more of a political decision between the owners rather than a legal decision.
But certainly the carriers for the teams have no obligation to the NFL, and the decision of whether or not to join in these suits to recover payments made in related workers' compensation claims is a more pure business decision.
Whether or not the teams can exert influence on their carriers presents an interesting ethical dilemma due to the inherent conflict of interest.
The NFL concussion cases are nothing dramatic in my opinion, and reach newsworthy status only because this country loves its football. If this were some other industry there would be hardly any notice at all.
Indeed some of the sports commentators have ridiculed the lawsuits and the publicity they are drawing, stating that the players knew they were getting into a dangerous, violent game and that they are paid well to do so - basically assumption of the risk.
For legal wonks though, this is a very interesting situation because the NFL is owned by its member teams setting up a closed network that can five rise to conflicts of interest such as this potential subrogation issue.
It will be a couple of years before this all gets sorted out. I suspect eventually the game of football is going to undergo some "reform" in both equipment and rules.
In the meantime the uniquely American appeal of football extends to the legal playing field too.
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