Dave Pear's Blog

First the serious stuff: One more helmet concussion lawsuit filed in California by Hausfeld LLP and Pearson Simon Warshaw & Penny LLP, on behalf of Cedrick Hardman and Tommy Mason against the NFL, Riddell and Easton-Bell. The two Exhibits include proposals for medical monitoring and benefits after a career in football.
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And we’re not letting the NFLPA off the hook today either: Here’s another good reason for retired players to manage and administer their own benefits: Be sure to read about the Gene Upshaw NFL Player Health Reimburse lobby at the end of this post! Oh well – Another day, another $100,000!
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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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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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It looks like the latest Congressional hearings into brain concussions in the NFL will be starting this Wednesday, October 28th. From all the preliminary announcements, it appears that only two people have been officially announced to testify: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith. So far, no experts such as neurosurgeons and brain scientists have been announced to testify. We have to wonder who called this hearing on such short notice and why now just as the 2010 lockout is looming and brain concussions have taken center stage in the retired players’ battle for independent representation. With a hat tip to all those other Top 10 Lists out there, we’ve come up with a simple list of the Top 10 Questions that Congress should be asking of Goodell and Smith directly.

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How time flies. It’s been over 6 months since NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell first announced his tour back in September to hear all about retired players’ grievances. (That story first appeared HERE.) You may remember that this tour was announced with great fanfare and press last year as Roger Goodell’s opportunity to speak and listen to the retired players across the country. If the reports have been accurate, it sounds like the Commish managed to visit a staggering 6 NFL cities out of a total of 32 teams (?!!) before all press releases stopped.

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Our good friend and player advocate, disability attorney John Hogan, was able to attend that Symposium held at the Baltimore School of Law on Thursday. Here are his notes from that day:

Notes from

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Well, after weeks of calling and calling and leaving messages with the Alliance offices for Sarah Gaunt, I finally received a package on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 from the NFL Player Benefits Office out of Baltimore. When I had called their offices last Thursday, CJ told me to leave a message for a “Rosemary” and that she would call me back later in the day. I never heard back from anyone through the weekend and the next thing you know, this package shows up on April Fools Day! (Click on images to enlarge for reading.)

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