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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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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An old teammate and someone I considered a friend passed away over the weekend. Last week, it had been reported – erroneously – that Lee Roy Selmon had died of a stroke in Tampa (click HERE to read the story). But then I received a phone call this weekend from a mutual teammate, Council Rudolph, that Lee Roy had indeed finally succumbed a couple of days after his initial stroke. (Story HERE.) We all played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the late 70′s and Lee Roy went on to make it into the Hall of Fame, eventually settling into a post-football career as very successful restauranteur and philanthropist in the Tampa Bay area.
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But what has bothered me a lot after I first read about Lee Roy’s passing were a few journalists who insisted on comparing Lee Roy Selmon’s life to the late Dave Duerson (who committed suicide back in February this year). I have no doubt that Lee Roy and Duerson both died as a result of their brain injuries from professional football. But that is where the comparisons should end.
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Lee Roy and I were teammates in Tampa Bay from 1976 to 1978. Lee Roy was a truly nice guy and everyone liked him (unless you had to face him on the field!). However, to pass away at the age of 56 is way too young. We all know that concussions and strokes go hand-in-hand. His brother Dewey is also a nice guy and he played for the Buccaneers too. But Lee Roy was a very private person so it may be difficult to find out any of the details concerning his death. We can only hope that his family might share a little information about his stroke so that it may help many of us who are also facing a similar fate.
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Here’s one more piece on Lee Roy’s big heart and generosity:
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Selmon’s generosity touched prep sports

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Posted with the express consent of Irv Muchnick:
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NFL Retirees’ ‘Legacy Fund’ Boost an Obvious Throwaway Line of Lockout-Ending CBA

Published August 29th, 2011
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Dissident National Football League retiree Dave Pear’s blog has more primary-source email exchanges among principals about the confused status of increased pensions for pre-1993 players as a result of the so-called Legacy Fund, which was negotiated into the recent collective bargaining agreement between the league and the NFL Players Association. Some of these equivocal words emanate from Sam McCullum, the replacement for the late Dave Duerson on the joint labor-management disability claims review board.
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See “More unanswered questions on pre-93 issues”.
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Posted with the express consent of Irv Muchnick:
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Football Media, Courts Still Not Tackling Lesson of Dave Duerson Suicide

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by Irvin Muchnick‚ Aug. 19‚ 2011
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Six months after Dave Duerson put a bullet through his own chest, the annual national brain trauma toll mounts again, from the National Football League all the way down to the peewees. Meanwhile, the mentally flabby sports media continue putting out the same sugar-coated message: that we should become more “aware” about concussions, and that pro football players should emulate Duerson by donating their brains for research – as if Duerson – who spent his late life denying others’ claims of concussion syndrome – personally invented Chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy (CTE).
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Here’s a better idea: Next month, in federal court in Maryland, there will be a pretrial hearing in a case against the NFL retirement plan by Andrew Stewart, who played linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers and two other teams from 1989 to 1993, and whose application for increased disability benefits had been rejected. Stewart’s lawyer wants the court to examine the work of Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Players Retirement Plan’s (EDITOR’S NOTE: Corrected from the original post) joint owner/players’ union Board of Trustees – which included Duerson.
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Alex Marvez of FoxSports.com, who is doing as good a job as any mainstream journalist on the concussion story’s off-the-field aspects, broke the Stewart lawsuit development (Click HERE to read his post).
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EDITOR’S NOTE: We just received a copy of another e-mail that was sent out by Jim McFarland, a non-voting member of the NFLPA Former Players Executive Committee. Jim expresses his concerns with key issues that the Union appears to have “negotiated” on behalf of Retired Players (while they were no longer a Union) and he sounds like he’s just as surprised to finally hear about them as the rest of you… His e-mail to NFLPA counsel, Tom Depaso, is added to the bottom of this post.
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And on and on it goes. Dave just received one more enlightening e-mail from NFLPA’s Dave Duerson replacement, Sam McCullum, this morning with more “clarification” on their Coming Soon Improvements to Retired Players Benefits á la NFLPA. Here it is in its unedited form:
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EDITOR’S NOTE: Author Irv Muchnick has been covering the big picture on concussions in sports and its broader effects on society in general. In following up with our most recent posts and debates with insiders from the NFLPA on their role in Disability Benefits – or lack thereof – we’re presenting three of Irv’s current posts.
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Posted with the express consent of Irv Muchnick:
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Sports Concussion Crisis a Culture-Wide Problem – Maybe a Post-Ideological One, Too

August 8‚ 2011
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by Irvin Muchnick
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Writing in The Nation’s special August 15-22 sports issue, currently on newsstands, recently retired Denver Broncos wide receiver turned social critic Nate Jackson reflects on the football concussion crisis. Jackson is short on specifics and long on the banal (“But at what price comes the glory?”). Jackson also makes regrettable separation from the essential theme: traumatic brain injuries are not the same as blown-out knees; the National Football League’s commerce-first values inculcate amateur sports, as well; and the depth and breadth of the resulting societal fallout far exceed the public’s current perception.
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Posted with the express consent of Irv Muchnick:
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by Irvin Muchnick‚
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July 18‚ 2011
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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

NFL’s big game against the players starts this week in Minneapolis

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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

Are sports fans resilient or suckers?

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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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At the beginning of May, I had mailed and posted a series of questions to Mary-Ann Fleming, the NFL’s Director of Player Benefits. (Click HERE to read the original questions I’d submitted.) A week later, I received a short letter from them informing me that she was away on business and then on vacation. Nearly a month after sending out my first letter, I finally received a 3-page response via FedEx. (By the way, what’s the deal with all that? No one gets back to me quickly and when you do, there are no answers to my questions. You take over 2 years to finally decide to send me a second reimbursement check for $202.68 as your share of a $60,000 surgery. Yet you have paid assistants to respond that you’re away on vacation. And everything’s done by FedEx – at our plan’s expense, no less.)

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Memo to DeMaurice Smith,

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Here’s the headline from USA Today:

AAA
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