The NFL has recently found itself at the center of a controversial and landmark lawsuit regarding the safety and long-term health of its players. After a long period of litigation and appeals, the NFL and the NFL Players’ Association settled for a lawsuit that will see the league pay out nearly $1 billion to more than 20,000 former players.
The reason for the payout? The players were able to argue and successfully prove that the league had been negligent in educating them about the dangers and long-term health effects of repetitive traumatic brain injuries and likewise failed to adequately protect them to minimize this risk as much as possible.
The Physical Nature of Professional Football
Anybody who has seen American Football before knows it’s a physical game filled with high-power impacts and loads of potentially dangerous situations. However, until recently not much was known about the long-term health effects of the repeated head-trauma these players received while playing every weekend for nearly half of a calendar year.
Recently, scientific studies have come out demonstrating the danger of these repetitive impacts to the heads of players, despite the fact that the helmets all players wear are state-of-the-art and continue to evolve to perform better under harder impacts. Even though the league had evidence demonstrating the long-term damages these brain injuries could cause, the league took no action to protect their players for years, allowing more players to become injured and have little to no source of compensation or medical treatment funding beyond their own retirement plans.
How The Lawsuit is Similar to Your Case
The NFL’s concussion suit is similar to many other types of lawsuits that are filed by workers against their employers around the country every day. Whenever a job requires an employee to be subjected to potentially dangerous working conditions, such as repetitive motions, trauma injuries, or even exposure to toxic substances, employers are required to disclose these dangers to their workers and provide them with reasonable care for the sicknesses and injuries that may result.
In the NFL’s case, the science regarding head trauma injuries has advanced significantly over the last few decades, however the rules of the sport were very slow to change in order to reflect these new learnings, allowing players to continue to sustain life-altering injuries. As a result, many retired players now struggle with diseases such as ALS, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease and more.
If you or a loved one has suffered long-term health effects due to repetitive exposure or trauma, then you may be eligible for compensation. The legal team at Sico Hoelscher Harris LLP have assisted clients across the country with their personal injury claims, earning more than $1 billion in verdicts and settlements. They have also been named to the list of Super Lawyers, and are AV® Rated by Martindale-Hubbell®, which stand as a testament to their ethics and their excellence recognized by their peers.
Call Sico Hoelscher Harris LLP at 877.653.3334 today and request a free consultation from our experienced Corpus Christi injury attorneys today.