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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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NY Daily News: Jimmie Giles

Attorney John Hogan has been representing retired Tampa Bay Buccaneer Jimmie Giles to have his status changed from inactive Total & Permanent (T&P) Disability to more evident Football Degenerative T & P Disability. As with Dave’s case, Jimmie had already qualified for and was receiving Social Security Disability (also difficult to qualify for but nonetheless fair and rules-based). According to an earlier amendment to the Plan, Jimmie’s SS Disability qualified him at the very least for a new re-evaluation and reclassification with little fanfare. You can read Jimmie’s story in an earlier New York Daily News story from Wayne Coffey by clicking HERE.

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Wednesday, 29 December 2010

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BY EVAN WEINER
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For New York Giants backers, this Sunday’s contest against the Washington Redskins could be the team’s final game for a long, long time. The National Football League’s Collective Bargaining Agreement ends on March 3 and should the owners and players not reach an agreement, the NFL’s off-season will be silent except for the annual draft which will take place as scheduled.
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There will be no free agency, no mini-camps, no organized team activities, no overlooked-in-the-draft college kids signing up with teams and no training camp until the owners and players reach an accord. Meanwhile the players will challenge the legitimacy of the owners’ war chest, which is being stuffed with money from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (FOX), General Electric’s NBC, Summer Redstone’s CBS, Disney’s ESPN and DirecTV. The players filed a complaint to Special Master of the National Football League Stephen Burbank, a University of Pennsylvania law professor. Burbank was appointed by a federal court in 2002 to handle disputes between the owners and players.
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The players could decertify the association, which means that the NFLPA could go to court and ask for an injunction to end the lockout. The argument would be that the players are independent contractors and not part of the association. The owners plan to end players’ benefits as soon as the lockout starts.
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The dispute comes down to money. The NFL owners want to cut back revenues given to the players from 59 to 48 percent and cut salaries by 18 percent. But there are some other issues such as pensions and health benefits. Health benefits should emerge as a major issue, but it hasn’t.
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Week after week, National Football League players are getting hurt in alarming numbers. Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rogers, who was cleared to play against the Giants last Sunday, has had two concussions this year. A concussion is a brain injury. Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Austin Collie is done for the season after getting his “bell rung” again. The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick is on the field because 2010 Eagles starting quarterback Kevin Kolb went down with a head injury.
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If there is a fortunate part of all the head injuries that have occurred is that the NFL is somewhat more diligent in taking care of head injuries than the League was saying back in 1980. The League is now urging players who have suffered head injuries to come forward and if a teammate notices something awry with a player he suspects has suffered a head injury to speak up.
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But football players, being tough, macho guys who succumb to peer pressure get on the field as soon as they are “well enough” to perform.
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Football players have “sucked it up” since the game was invented and suffered life changing injuries as a result of their actions on the field. A lot of NFL players are now getting government assistance through Social  Security Disability and Medicare because they have pre-existing conditions and cannot get health benefits. The issue of our government taking care of discarded players is something that the news media has ignored for reasons known only to those who decide what “news” to cover.

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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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