In another not-so-surprising fashion, the family of the late Junior Seau filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the NFL and Riddell Helmets.<\/p>\n
This will certainly provide a boost to the litigation. Seau is arguably the most prominent player, living or deceased, to join the litigation. (Sorry, Eric Dickerson) Whether this will force the NFL\u2019s hand to start talking settlement is highly doubtful, but it may cause other prominent players to join the NFL Concussion Litigation Club.<\/p>\n
Two weeks ago, it was announced that Seau\u2019s brain showed signs of the debilitating neurodegenerative disease, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). Shortly after the announcement was made, the NFL issued a statement \u2013 effectively thanking the Seau family for deciding to sue it: \u201cWe appreciate the Seau family\u2019s cooperation with the National Institutes of Health.\u201d<\/p>\n
These results may have been the turning point in the Seau\u2019s family\u2019s decision to sue the NFL.<\/p>\n
Seau\u2019s lawsuit is not unique, however. There are a dozen wrongful death lawsuits pending against the NFL \u2013 the most notable are Dave Duerson and Andre Waters, both of whom were diagnosed with CTE.<\/p>\n
Seau, however, is the youngest, and he played during an era where the alleged fraud of the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee (1994 \u2013 2009) was likely at its peak.<\/p>\n
Similar to the other lawsuits filed outside of Philadelphia (E.D. of PA), Seau\u2019s lawsuit will soon be removed to federal court and then transferred and consolidated with the other 198 concussion lawsuits.<\/p>\n
Assuming the players survive all the pre-trial hurdles \u2013 which is a BIG assumption \u2013 there is a chance that Seau\u2019s lawsuit may be chosen as the first bellwether case. In other words, the plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers may choose to try Seau\u2019s case because it arguably has the best facts.<\/p>\n
Bellwether cases are common in mass tort litigation; the purpose is to give an indication to both sides (i.e. plaintiff sand defendants) as to the value, among other things, of the case.<\/p>\n
In theory, if the plaintiffs were to try Seau\u2019s case and receive a huge verdict, the NFL would likely want to talk a global settlement to avoid multiple verdicts throughout the country. On the other hand, if Seau\u2019s lawsuit fell on deaf ears and the jury provided a defense verdict, the NFL would \u2013 puff out its chest \u2013 tell the plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers to bring on more cases \u2013 that will, perhaps, be defeated.<\/p>\n
All of this talk about jury trials is YEARS away, however. The discovery process alone could take 2-15 years, add all the motion practice, and I don\u2019t think a case would be tried, IF at all, until 2018 at the earliest.<\/p>\n
Only time will tell whether Seau’s \u00a0lawsuit was the one that broke the NFL’s back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In another not-so-surprising fashion, the family of the late Junior Seau filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the NFL and Riddell Helmets. This will certainly provide a boost to the litigation. Seau is arguably the most prominent player, living or deceased, to join the litigation. (Sorry, Eric Dickerson) Whether this will force the NFL\u2019s hand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,16,23,4,172,127,19],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1351"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1353,"href":"http:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351\/revisions\/1353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nflconcussionlitigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}