NFL, former players agree to settle concussion lawsuit

The NFL has agreed to a revised settlement with former players who sued the league for brain injuries suffered during their playing days. The original $765 million settlement, reached last August, pledged $675 million in a monetary fund to compensate former players and the families of deceased players who suffered from cognitive injury. In the revised deal, that monetary fund will not be capped at a specific dollar amount, the NFL and the players’ counsel announced in a joint statement.

The uncapped monetary fund is the biggest thing, although there were several minor changes to the settlement that could have a big impact on players. Chris Seeger, lead counsel for the retired players in the lawsuit, enumerated several in a conference call Wednesday afternoon:

The former NFL players who sued the league for concealing a link between football and brain damage initially sought slightly more than $2 billion to settle the case, reports Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada of ESPN.com

The two sides ended up settling for $765 million, with $675 million to compensate former players and families of deceased players who have suffered from cognitive injury. The NFL will also cover the cost of the attorney fee’s for the players, pushing the total bill close to $1 billion.

Because football is the game that it is, there’s always a great deal of change and churn in the NFL -- always various organizational philosophies and approaches ascending and descending, little aesthetic fads and human-scale memes and personnel types booming and busting. There’s a pervasive fundamental steakheadedness in evidence, too, because It’s A Man’s Game In The National Football League and so on, and also because people paid well for their expertise in this area have ascertained that strident rum-dummy-dum Fake War pomp is the best way to sell the NFL product. But even that changes over time, to keep pace with the rest of the changing world. Things about the NFL change, but the NFL does not change.

If the game of football changes because it’s a living, protean thing, the NFL does not change because it is not -- it is a business concern, vast and vastly profitable and subject to a set of imperatives that are not necessarily congruent with those of the game or the people playing and watching and caring about it. And so the NFL grows and bloats and synergizes and leverages and re-leverages, it expands metastatically and majestically, all of which looks like change but is really just the same profitable thing piling and towering atop itself.

The NFL has reached a $765 million settlement with more than 4,500 former players who brought suit against the league for brain injuries suffered on the field, according to court documents released on Thursday.

The settlement will save the league years of costly litigation, and it provides former players and their families with medical assistance and financial support. The agreement will fund medical exams, concussion-related compensation and medical research.

The football world has been wringing its hands for a few years now because of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease caused by concussions and other head-on collisions that happen constantly on a football field. A number of players have committed suicide in the past few years and later been diagnosed with this condition after careful autopsies examining their brain. To take the most famous and recent example, there’s Junior Seau, who committed suicide last spring. Two weeks ago it was revealed his brain was degenerating thanks to CTE.

It’s all pretty horrifying.

Several thousand retired NFL players, some of them represented posthumously, are asking a federal court to decide whether or not the league was negligent and is liable for the long-term health issues associated with concussions and head trauma sustained as a result of playing football. However, before their case can be heard, Judge Anita Brody must decide whether or not the matter belongs in court or in front of an arbitrator.

This week, the NFL filed a reply brief countering the plaintiffs’ claim that the issue belongs court. The league stood firm on the matter of preemption, arguing that the labor law restricts the matter of on-field injuries to the grievance system set forth in the collective bargaining agreement.

The finding comes only months after thousands of former NFL players joined a class action lawsuit against the NFL for damages resulting from concussions and head injuries. The suit claims negligence on the part of the NFL in denying the link between head trauma and long-term player health.

In August, the NFL filed to dismiss the class action lawsuit. The league claims that it never concealed information regarding the risks associated with head injuries. It also points to an evolving understanding of the issue, in part reflected in changes to policies and rules over the years.

Mary Ann Easterling described two starkly different versions of her late husband Ray. The man she married in 1976 after the two met in college at a Bible study changed in his 40s.

“Ray began to suffer from insomnia and depression,” Easterling said of her late husband. “He began to make decisions that were contrary to our marriage’s guiding philosophy. Our home life became chaotic. I was at a loss as to reason for these changes. Over the last 20 years, struggles deepened, but new symptoms appeared.”

The NFL is in the midst of a legal battle with former NFL players over concussions. The league is currently facing close to 100 separate lawsuits from former players, but according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram the lawsuits will be consolidated on Thursday.

The lawsuits will be consolidated in the “master complaint” that prosecutors will file on Thursday in Philadelphia, Pa. although it was close to 100 separate lawsuits, the lawsuits combined involve more than 1,000 former NFL players, who all claim the league hid information about the dangers of concussions suffered while playing.

The NFL has been increasing the emphasis on safety, especially concussions the past season or so, but that hasn’t stopped former NFL players from joining the lawsuit against the NFL. Another lawsuit has now been added to the pile, according to Paul D. Anderson, who’s been compiling the list of players in the lawsuit.

Morton joining the lawsuit blaming the NFL seems kind of silly to me, considering that after his NFL career as a wide receiver, he decided to take up the sport of Mixed Martial Arts. Morton had just one professional fight in his MMA career. Back in 2007, Morton took on Bernard Ackah at the K-1 Dynamite!! USA event in California. Morton was knocked out with a punch in 0:38 seconds in the first-round and was out for quite a while, being taken out on a stretcher. I don’t know how many concussions Morton suffered in the NFL, but I find it hard to believe if he has issues dealing with life after football, this concussion suffered in the MMA match had to play a part.

Dickerson went on to a broadcast career with ESPN and ABC after his playing days, working on Monday Night Football broadcasts.

There are now 80 filed lawsuits against the NFL related to concussions, according to Anderson, and almost 2,300 named plaintiffs in them.

The national debate surrounding the safety of the NFL and the long-term effects of players who suffer concussions is something that is currently seeing a lot of media attention. These debates and the scrutiny of NFL safety practices will only intensify in the months -- and perhaps years -- to come, as close to 2,000 former players have brought lawsuits against the league for head injuries.

Monk may be the sort of high-profile former player to really take these legal proceedings to the front pages.

The NFL has come under a lot of fire recently for not putting enough focus on player safety. As more and more research is conducted on post-concussion effects and the association of football with traumatic brain injury, these attacks and debates are only going to increase and intensify.

The amount of litigation is also only going to increase. Reuters, via the New York Times, reports that over 100 former NFL players, including Chris Doleman, Jamal Anderson and Jessie Tuggle, have filed lawsuits against the league on Thursday.