Dave Pear's Blog

Several of my friends from our college football days were writing each other at the end of the year and former UW Husky Clyde Werner sent a note asking us for a recommendation to a good orthopedic doctor in Seattle. Clyde ended up sending us his personal story about the injuries he’s sustained from his 8-year career in football with no disability benefits. Even worse are his final comments about his pension check. We’ve pointed out in the past that the NFLPA and the NFL perpetuated the myth that we were all going to be dead by 52 so we needed to take drastically reduced pensions early. And one more time: We were told we couldn’t receive disability benefits if we collected a pension (or vice versa) because that was the law (according to Gene Upshaw). For years – because we didn’t have the means to communicate with each other as a group – it was generally dismissed as an “urban myth” that any players had actually been advised to take early retirement pensions because of this 52 Rule. (In fact, just as the NFL now has the 88 Plan for players with dementia, we’re going to start referring to this as The NFLPA 52 Plan from now on.) More and more players keep writing in to confirm that they too were also told to take that 52 Plan. Too many to ever dismiss any longer – we were all lied to over the years. It was called F-R-A-U-D then and it’s still called fraud today.

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After what seems like an eternity, Manett Phelps & Phillips and McKool Smith filed Motions in the Parrish, Adderley, Roberts vs. the NFLPA/Players Inc. class action lawsuit late last week for final review and court approval on August 20, 2009 by Judge Alsup. The documents just became available online so we’ve loaded them up on DocStoc once again for easier viewing and searching. The main part of the Motion outlines the basics of the case and subsequent settlement. The Exhibits outline the payment plan and schedules with the first payment scheduled for July 13, 2009 (they’ll miss that one!) and the second set for June 5, 2010.

It’s always interesting digging into the details: Turns out the settlement will be managed and distributed by Garden City Group which just happens to be right here in Seattle. Half of the funds (around $13 million) were placed into escrow on July 13th, the day this Motion was apparently filed. And then barring no problems, the balance will be placed into escrow on June 5, 2010 for distribution shortly after that. Another interesting detail from Page 7 of Exhibit 1: Players who elected to Opt-Out John Baker, Richard Yelvington, Lynn Chandnois, John Demarie, Dan Goich, Daniel Direnzo, James “Scottie” Graham, Deacon Jones, Steve Largent, Brig Owens, Ben Pucci, Donald Testerman and Andre Collins were all excluded from suit.

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