The potentially game-changing legal battle over concussions between the NFL and more than 2,000 of its former players entered an important new phase Thursday.
What had been a wave of scattered lawsuits by retirees against the league became a singular attack when more than 80 of the cases were consolidated as one “master complaint” in federal court in Philadelphia.
The new suit follows the same track as all of its predecessors, accusing the NFL of a deliberate, decades-long plan to deny and cover up links between concussions suffered on the field and permanent brain injuries.
“Despite its knowledge and controlling role in governing player conduct on and off the field, the NFL turned a blind eye to the risk and failed to warn and/or impose safety regulations governing this well-recognized health and safety problem,” the players charged in the consolidated complaint.
The league had the same reaction to the new suit that it has had throughout the steady drip of cases brought by smaller groups of players, denying it conducted any cover-up.
“Any allegation that the NFL sought to mislead players has no merit,” the NFL said in a statement. “It stands in contrast to the league’s many actions to better protect players and advance the science and medical understanding of the management and treatment of concussions.”
The league defended itself by pointing to a wide range of medical programs it provides retirees, including joint replacement, neurological and spinal evaluations and treatment for dementia, Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease even if the player can’t prove those conditions came from football.
The consolidated suit had been expected for months by the league and legal observers, who said that bringing the cases together as one large class-action complaint was typical in such situations.
Former stars including Jim McMahon, Tony Dorsett, Eric Dickerson and Art Monk are among the retirees who have joined the suit, which also accuses the NFL of deliberately falsifying the results of studies the league conducted into brain trauma starting in 1994.
The players’ case has gained momentum in recent years due to the suicides of several retirees — including Andre Waters, Dave Duerson and Ray Easterling — that relatives claim resulted from football-induced brain trauma. As a result, Kurt Warner and the Jets’ Bart Scott have joined a chorus of current and former players saying they wouldn’t want their children to play football because of the potential of brain trauma.
The consolidated suit says the NFL produced “industry-funded, biased and falsified research that falsely claimed that concussive and sub-concussive head impacts in football do not present serious, life-altering risks.”
As evidence of that, several players have pointed to comments made to Congress last year by the new chief of the NFL’s committee on concussion research, who completely disavowed an early study by different league-hired medical experts that denied any link between football and permanent brain trauma.
“There was no science in that,” Dr. Mitchel Berger from the University of California-San Francisco told Congress in 2011 when asked about the work of Dr. Ira Casson, the NFL’s longtime denier of permanent, football-related brain trauma. “We’re really moving on from that data. There’s really nothing we can do with that data in terms of how it was collected and assessed.”
Easterling’s widow, Mary Ann, told the Associated Press that the goal of the consolidated suit is simple.
“We want to see them take care of the players,” she said.