Jeffrey Dahl: The NFL & ERISA Law
Time for a brief intermission while Jennifer catches her breath as she finalizes the second half of our Conference videos. But we’re not letting up from our focus on providing information and finding and promoting programs that will help to improve retired players’ lives after football.
.
One of our recent posts from Evan Weiner covered Gene Atkins’ life after football (click HERE to read that earlier post). Evan’s post brought up one of the issues that we mention a lot and it was one of the topics that we did not have an opportunity to cover at our recent Conference: ERISA law. You’ve heard Dave and many of the other players and attorneys referring to it.
.
The US Department of Labor defines ERISA Law as, “The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) is a federal law that sets minimum standards for most voluntarily established pension and health plans in private industry to provide protection for individuals in these plans.
.
“ERISA requires plans to provide participants with plan information including important information about plan features and funding; provides fiduciary responsibilities for those who manage and control plan assets; requires plans to establish a grievance and appeals process for participants to get benefits from their plans; and gives participants the right to sue for benefits and breaches of fiduciary duty.”
.
You can read the Dept. of Labor’s website information on ERISA law - click HERE.
.
Jeffrey Dahl is the attorney representing Gene Atkins in his lawsuit against the NFL. We just received his permission to post his recent article from Journal of Consumer and Commercial Law detailing the NFL’s longstanding history of violations of ERISA law and why he filed the case on behalf of Atkins. It’s a long read but well worth the effort if you want to bring yourself up to speed on what the League has been doing over the years to chip away at its employees’ rights under Federal laws that were meant to protect them. We’re looking forward to having Jeff speak at next year’s Conference!
.
We’ve uploaded the entire article to Scribd for easier viewing and to make it downloadable. You can click the link to go over to Scribd’s site where you can enlarge it for easier navigation (hit the ESC key to close). You can also click the DOWNLOAD button to save a PDF copy for printing and reading later.
.
Jeffrey Dahl NFL and ERISA
.
For the first time, the NFL and the NFLPA extended an invitation to “The Independent Retired Players” to attend and participate in a meeting called to discuss the problems that continue to plague Retirees. Bob Grant, an Independent Activist and Advocate for our cause, was asked to attend on behalf of the Retired Players.
