The NFL’s health-related legal challenges aren’t going away anytime soon.
Still dealing with a concussion settlement that appears to be in trouble, the league was hit with on another front Tuesday when a group of former players filed a lawsuit alleging they were recklessly supplied with risky painkillers that led to medical woes later in life.
The retired players claim the NFL obtained the powerful narcotics illegally and administered them without prescriptions and with no warnings of their potential side effects so that they could return to the field quickly.
Ex-Bear quarterback Jim McMahon and two other members of Chicago’s 1985 Super Bowl-winning team were among the eight plaintiffs in the suit, which was filed in San Francisco.
The former players hope to turn their case into a class-action suit and said in the filing that more than 500 of their fellow retirees are prepared to join it if that happens.
This latest suit isn’t good news for the NFL, considering the $765 million settlement it reached with a group of players last year on the concussion issue — without any admission of fault on the league’s part — is in limbo.
Several retired players party to the concussion suit say the settlement is too small, and the judge in the case has yet to sign off on the deal because of various concerns about it.
McMahon, who is also part of the concussion suit, said in the painkiller suit that team doctors hid a broken neck and ankle from him during his career while pushing him back on the field with painkillers.
McMahon said he became so addicted to the painkillers that he eventually took more than 100 Percocet pills per month year-round, and that team doctors and trainers gave them to him without a prescription and without any explanation of their side effects.
Doug Van Horne, one of McMahon’s Chicago teammates, is also part of the painkiller suit and said he played an entire season with a broken leg that wasn’t revealed to him until five years later.
“During [the five years], he was fed a constant diet of pills to deal with the pain,” according to the suit.
The suit seeks unspecified damages, as well as an injunction forcing the NFL to create a testing and monitoring program for painkillers.
The suit also seeks to include any former players who received painkillers, anti-inflammatories, local anesthetic, sleeping aids or other drugs without prescription, an independent diagnosis or a warning about side effects.
“The NFL knew of the debilitating effects of these drugs on all of its players and callously ignored the players’ long-term health in its obsession to return them to play,” Steven Silverman, attorney for the players, told the Associated Press.
Another plaintiff in the painkiller suit, former 49ers offensive lineman Jeremy Newberry, claims that he is currently suffering from renal failure, high blood pressure and “violent” headaches resulting from the team administering him anti-inflammatory medication and painkillers throughout his 11-year playing career, which ended in 2009.