Dave Pear's Blog

Happy Holidays, Football and Sports Concussion Establishment: 2012 Is the Year of the Tobacco-Style Lawsuit

Posted with the express consent of Irv Muchnick from his blog Concussion Inc.:

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Dave has been talking with Bette Schwager over the past few weeks about her treatment (or mistreatment) at the hands of the NFLPA and the Players Assistance Trust (PAT). We asked her to write the story in her own words so that our readers can understand just a little of the senseless treatment she and her family have been put through by the NFLPA and their so-called assistance programs this past year. Bette’s husband, Bruce, had played football at the Merchant Marine Academy before being drafted by the Chicago Cardinals in 1955. The Cardinals refused to take him off their reserve list even as he went in to service with the Navy from 1956 – 1958. So Bruce became another one of the pre-’93 players (pre-’72!) who was actually on the roster and vested with enough years but never granted vesting. You can read the full story from Alan Schwarz in his June 2011 New York Times article – click HERE. We’ve also posted a copy of the 2-page Release Letter that the NFLPA tried to get Bette to sign after Bruce passed away before he was to be evicted from his dementia care facility because the NFLPA stopped paying his bill. After you read Bette’s story and the Release Letter, you’ll understand why we’ve been cautioning everyone to be extremely careful of signing anything from these people without close scrutiny and advice. continue reading »

Duerson Apparently Did Not Review Andrew Stewart NFL Disability Claim

Posted with the express consent of Irv Muchnick:
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Published September 10th, 2011
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On August 16, FoxSports.com’s Alex Marvez broke the story of a lawsuit against the National Football League’s Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle Retirement Plan, in federal court in Maryland, by retired player Andrew Stewart. I discussed the case on my Concussion Blog – click HERE.
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The premise of Marvez’s piece aligned with an important investigative angle of this blog: that the Stewart suit might reveal more about the work on the disability claims review board of Dave Duerson. But it turns out that, while Stewart’s attorneys have made a lot of progress in getting scrutiny in open court of the board’s inner workings – a very good thing – Duerson himself did not participate in the deliberations of Stewart’s particular case in August of last year.
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The three NFL Players Association representatives on the board for Stewart’s review were Andre Collins, Robert Smith, and Jeff Van Note. “I do not know why Duerson was not on the Board that day,” Stewart attorney Michael Rosenthal e-mailed me.
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According to John Hogan, who represents many retired players from his disability law practice in Georgia, retirement board members occasionally designate others as proxies, and that is probably what happened here. The whole process is mysterious and secretive, which is why we need the drip-drip-drip of additional cases to break down the NFL and NFLPA’s limestone wall. (The judge in the Stewart case has set a trial date, though he has not yet ruled on whether to permit live testimony. But the court seems to be leaning that way.)
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As I’ve said many times, perhaps the most tumultuous litigation for the football-concussion system isn’t by professionals. Rather, it involves youth athletes and the financial exposure of public schools for disabling injury and wrongful death. Without tackle football mania at the grassroots, the $10-billion-a-year NFL cannot recruit, inculcate, and thrive. We already know of one lawsuit in New Jersey by the family of a kid who died from a second concussion after being cleared to return to play – with the help of NFL and World Wrestling Entertainment witch doctor Joseph Maroon’s “ImPACT concussion management” software.
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Irvin Muchnick is author of CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death (2009) and WRESTLING BABYLON: Piledriving Tales of Drugs, Sex, Death, and Scandal (2007). He is a widely published magazine journalist and has appeared on forums as diverse as Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor,” National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air with Terry Gross,” and ESPN’s “Up Close.” Muchnick is lead respondent in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case for freelance writers’ rights, Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick.
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BeyondChron contributor Irvin Muchnick has launched his new website and blog “Concussion Inc.”. You can also find Irv on Twitter at http://twitter.com/irvmuch.
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Well, the floodgates are opening wider and wider. Sports Legacy Institute and Boston University held a press conference this past Monday to announce their findings on the late Dave Duerson’s brain examination. To no one’s surprise, they discovered the presence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in his brain.
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Former NFL player Dave Duerson found to have had brain damage

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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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Holy cow! You’d think we never went into the off-season already. Or maybe we just had to wait until Super Bowl was over to get more media attention. But the coverage on concussions has become a loud theme everywhere, especially following the suicide of Dave Duerson last week. Duerson had left instructions with his family to ensure that his brain was donated to the Sports Legacy Institute to look for the presence and extent of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), the marker for dementia and other brain problems. We had published a critical post on the NFLPA’s three representatives on the 6-member Board for the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle Retired NFL Players Retirement Plan, of which Duerson was a long-standing member. (You can read that May 2010 post by clicking HERE.)
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The New York Times‘ Alan Schwarz had two recent articles focusing on Duerson’s death and CTE:

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We’re starting the year with a lot of coverage on concussions. Our previous post pointed out the conflict-of-interest in selecting one brand of helmets over another primarily based more on sponsorship fees than actual protection statistics. The New York Times’ Alan Schwarz wrote another detailed look at the helmet industry, its lack of real standards and oversight, as well as a shocking inside look at the business of used helmets. Those of you with sons who play high school football may want to watch these chilling videos a couple of times to let it sink in. (And the kid never even led with his head!)

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Over the past few weeks, there have been some amazingly honest discussions during live NFL game broadcasts. So what’s been different from past coverage? Mainstream NFL announcers and commentators have begun to bring up those elephants in the room. And slowly, the conversation has also started shifting to include retired players who are now being vindicated by a growing wave of documented cases and scientific data on the long-term effects of concussions as a direct result of their past careers on the field. While concussions have always been a part of this physical sport, almost everyone also agrees that any dramatic changes or rules will likely make the game something completely different from what it has been.

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Slowly but surely, Congress is getting their heads and hands wrapped around the issue of concussions and their long-term damage. On Thursday, Sept. 23, 2010, Congressman George Miller (D-CA) held a House Education and Labor Committee hearing to begin to work out legislation to address the issue of concussions in school athletic programs. Did we even know that an estimated 400,000 concussions happened in high school sports just in the years 2005 – 2008 alone?

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NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith did not show up this morning for a one-day Sports Law Symposium at Santa Clara Law (click HERE to see today’s schedule) at which he was to participate on a concussions panel. The panel was focused on Athletic, Legal, Medical and Moral Issues of concussions. Other members on the panel included Disability Attorney John Hogan, Craig de Recat (partner with Manatt Phelps & Philips, lead attorneys – Players Inc. GLA lawsuit), New York Times journalist Alan Schwarz, Jim Brown (NFL Hall of Fame), Michael Dillingham (former team doctor – San Francisco 49ers) and Ben Lynch (retired NFL player and advocate). Everyone else showed up.

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Amen Clinics: Head Trauma / Drug Abuse

Our heads are hurting from following the growing coverage on concussions in the mainstream media just as the NFL season kicks off.

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Wow! You’d think that it was the NFL that’s suffering from one too many concussions with as many hits as they’ve been taking on the issue of concussions lately. This past week, another series of news stories have been hitting the wires, covering everything from brain injuries in general to football concussions in particular. This recent run started off with Evan Weiner‘s piece from the New Jersey Newsroom on how football players are discarded in retirement (click HERE to read that earlier post) as well as Alan Schwarz‘s continuing series on the NFL’s history of dodgy mishandling of concussions over the years (click HERE for the last round of recent coverage).

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(The Official NFL Concussion Poster is on the left and on the right, what it might have looked like when Dr. No was still chair of the “Mild” Traumatic Brain Injury Committee. Click on the posters to enlarge for viewing and printing.)

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Alan Schwarz from the New York Times covered the new NFL concussion policy and those fancy new posters that they’re going to be hanging up in the lockers from now on.

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