After last Sunday’s Hall of Fame game was cancelled on account of poor field conditions, lawyer Michael Avenatti filed a class-action lawsuit against the NFL seeking compensation for losses incurred by fans that attended the cancelled game. According to NBC Sports, Avenatti sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Monday morning with a settlement offer. Reports say that the lawyer …
If customers who incurred unnecessary expenses to attend the NFL game in Canton that wasn’t played in Canton (or anywhere else) on Sunday night want to be reimbursed for those expenses, they’ll have to hire a lawyer. The Hall of Fame has posted at its website the procedures for obtaining a refund, and the policy refers only to the price of the tickets. The window for obtaining refunds will be …
The NFL’s definition of “making it right” may not mesh with Ohio’s definition of the term. The lawyer who sued on behalf of fans who showed up for Super Bowl XLV with tickets that didn’t correspond to actual seats plans to sue the NFL for fans who showed up in Canton on Sunday night with tickets for a game that wasn’t played. “We plan on filing a class [action] within days,” Michael Avenatti …
Tony Romo’s National Fantasy Football Convention received more bad news this week. The original lawsuit the NFFC filed against the NFL was entirely dismissed by Dallas judge Carl Ginsberg on Tuesday. “We are very pleased by the court’s ruling dismissing all of the NFFC’s claims in this case,” said Thad Behrens, lead counsel for the NFL.
The lure of the NFL was just too much for Inglewood, a former city employee charges in a federal lawsuit. Barbara Ohno, Inglewood’s former budget and accounting manager, claims that the future home of the Los Angeles Rams massaged its accounting books to mask its financial problems. In the complaint, Ohno says that Mayor James T. Butts ordered employees to “create a facade of financial …
If you Google the words “concussion” “settlement” and “loan,” you’ll find ads. Lots of them. And they’re all variations on a theme: The NFL has agreed to pay former players up to $1 billion. No one knows when the payments will begin. And former players are struggling, sick, bankrupt. They need money. Now. Then comes the hook. Or rather, the promise: “We can solve this problem for you,” the ads promise former players. “It’s not a loan. It’s an advance on the money you’re due. And if the settlement doesn’t go through or if your claim is denied, you don’t have to pay back that advance.” The small print may mention that if you get the money, you’ll repay that alleged non-loan and interest of 40 percent…or more. The former NFL players being offered these deals are especially …
Retired NFL players who have been waiting since August 2013 for concussion settlement proceeds will be waiting even longer. Nine former NFL players have filed yet another appeal regarding the settlement, seeking a rehearing before the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit regarding the recent decision of a three-judge panel to uphold agreement to provide retired players with certain …
A ruling by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has opened up the door for personal injury cases involving NFL concussions to now be tried as class action lawsuits. The reason why this is such a big deal is that the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1997 decision in Amchem v. Windsor and its 1999 followup, Ortiz v. Fibreboard, made the use of class actions to settle large swaths of personal…
That is the only thing that is easy about this conversation. Anybody with a handful of working brain cells knows that football can not only cause concussions, but also multiple lesser bruises and damage to the brain. Those same folks also have to know that multiple concussions and/or trauma to the brain must create a significant risk for long range and possibly even permanent damage.
For years, the NFL has avoided saying whether football was related to CTE and deferred to the medical community’s findings on the matter. So why the change now? What is CTE?