While the NFL has reached a preliminary settlement on brain injury claims from former players, cases against the NCAA are still piling up.
A former New Jersey college football player from Long Island has filed a new class action suit in Brooklyn federal court against the collegiate body to force them to provide diagnostic testing.
Joel Jackson, who starred at Elmont Memorial High School before playing at Division III Morristown State, has yet to show any signs of damage from his playing days but wants to ensure that he will be able to detect any problems in the future, the suit states.
“The NCAA is in some fashion legally responsible for the present and future medical surveillance and diagnostic treatment to protect Plaintiff Joel Jackson and the Plaintiff class,” the suit states.
The NCAA is facing down a mountain of brain injury lawsuits from former players.
But while most of them are related to former student-athletes who have shown tangible signs of damage, Jackson wants the body to foot the bill for lifelong diagnostic tests and monitoring.
Now a health industry professional, Jackson, 25, claims in the suit that the NCAA has failed to provide proper measures to deal with the mushrooming controversy over football related injuries.
The body is “failing to implement procedures to monitor the health of student football players who have sustained (or are suspected of sustaining) concussive and or sub/concussive injuries,” the suit states.