Workers' Compensation: National Football League

Showing posts with label National Football League. Show all posts

Monday, August 18, 2014

State Sen. Leland Yee allegedly solicited bribes for NFL Workers’ Compensation Law

The NFL controversy involving workers' compensation claims continues to heat up. Today's post by Brett Gowen of the California Bar is shared from fbgslaw.com

Brett Gowen

As part of the ongoing saga of State Senator Leland Yee, a new charge for racketeering was given by a federal grand jury. As part of the indictment, Sen. Yee allegedly solicited $60,000 for Yee’s vote and another senator’s vote on a bill dealing with limiting workers’ compensation benefits for NFL players. According to the indictment, Sen. Yee believed the money would be paid by a NFL team owner according to an LA Times article.

Attorney, Melissa Brown at Fraulob Brown Gowen & Snapp, has a connection to the NFL and their treatment of injured players. Ms. Brown was retained as an expert witness for the NFL Players’ Association at an arbitration hearing involving a workers’ compensation law dispute with NFL owners. The arbitration, and the flurry of lawsuits involving NFL injuries, is part of the growing recognition of the impact the game has on the long-term health of the players.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Trickle Down Consequences of Professional Athletic Head Injuries

The new NFL logo went into use at the 2008 draft. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The consequences of denying workers' compensation benefits to professional athletes is having a profound effect on high school and community sporting programs. When a system that is supposed to provide medical benefits and disability payments in a summary fashion turns it's back on professional players, the issue of safety becomes even more important to those who re considering entering the economic lottery of sports for success.

"The sport of football is changing. Revelations about widespread brain injuries have ushered in new rules and a lawsuit against the NFL. But what about the millions of kids who play football in elementary, middle and high school? We asked our network of Student Reporting Labs around the country to investigate the impact of new awareness of concussions on youth football programs in their communities."

Click here to see/hear/read the continuing report from the PBS NewsHour "Tough Calls"

Friday, January 31, 2014

Football: The Business of Uncompensated Injuries

It is hard to image that any other Industry that denies its employees workers’s compensation benefits for known work-connected injuries would be bragging about a mere 13% reduction in head injuries. That is what the NFL is doing this week in advance of it’s annual mayhem ritual called the Super Bowl.

Sports entertainment is just big business. A major distraction to the routine of boring and tedious daily activities the NFL has found an addictive niche market, feed by high TV rating (ESPN) and fueled by gambling. A common denominator of public distraction.

The pawns in the system are those young “student-athletes” who take a risk as unpaid talent to carry on the dream for riches and fame as cheap (free) talent for the cause of school spirit and the hope of landing an NFL contract. The tragic risks exist even at that level of are more than obvious as I saw a Rutgers player crack his neck on the MetLife Stadium field in the Rutgers v Army game a couple of years ago.

Todays post is shared from the nytime.com/.

As the professional sports conglomerates spread their political influence from state house to state house demolishing the basic tenants of workers’ compensation.They continue their effort to bar injured players from seeking basic workers’ compensation benefits for known occupational risks,.They are now bragging about a mere 13% reduction. What about the other 87%? The injured players they can go uncompensated?

The...

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Thursday, January 30, 2014

Uncertainty Over Whether N.F.L. Settlement’s Money Will Last

As intriguing football matchups go, Sunday’s Super Bowl has nothing on one looming down the turnpike in federal court in Philadelphia — with Judge Anita B. Brody the ultimate referee.

Brody, considering the N.F.L.'s recent settlement with 4,500 retirees over work-related brain injuries, has asked both sides to demonstrate that their $765 million bargain will fulfill its promise to compensate every currently retired player who has or will develop a neurological condition such as dementia or Parkinson’s disease.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and the N.F.L. said independent actuaries and medical experts had endorsed the terms of the settlement. But the lawyers refuse to share any of their data with the public to help substantiate how they arrived at the $765 million figure, and there is growing displeasure among plaintiffs who have not been allowed to see the data, either.

Numbers can speak for themselves, though, and they bring a clear warning: The $765 million could run out faster than either side apparently believes. When one forecasts how many of the roughly 13,500 currently retired players may develop these conditions over the next 65 years, compensating them as the settlement directs could very well require close to $1 billion, and perhaps more.

No one can divine how many players will develop these conditions. But the best data available comes straight from the N.F.L., and it becomes instructive after some basic guidelines.

The settlement essentially...

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Uncertainty Over Whether N.F.L. Settlement's Money Will Last

With N.F.L. Concussion Deal, Two Tiers of Payouts

Concern Raised Over Opt-Out Terms of NFL Concussion Settlement

Judge Refuses to Sign Off on NFL Settlement

NFL concussion payout formula would provide up to $5 million per retired player

Friday, January 17, 2014

Judge Refuses to Sign Off on NFL Settlement

Workers' compensation has been a successful vehicle to shield employers from liability. Perhaps the the NFL should have considered when the legislated some professional athletes out of compensation court. Today's post was shared by WSJ Law Blog and comes from blogs.wsj.com

A federal judge on Tuesday refused to sign off on the NFL’s $760 million concussion settlement with retired players because of concerns that the pot of money might be too small to adequately compensate everyone owed money.
The ruling puts on hold what had been a major victory for the league on a controversial issue that had long haunted the sport. The deal reached last summer after months of negotiations required the NFL to pay $760 million — mostly in the form of medical benefits and injury compensation — to thousands of former players and their families.
A former federal judge acting as a court-appointed mediator endorsed the proposed settlement in court papers this month, calling it “fair and reasonable.”
U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody of Pennsylvania, though, wasn’t convinced, denying her preliminary approval.
“I am primarily concerned that not all Retired NFL Football Players who ultimately receive a Qualifying Diagnosis or their related claimants will be paid,” Judge Brody wrote in her order. “Even if only 10 percent of Retired NFL Football Players eventually receive a Qualifying diagnosis, it is difficult to see how the Monetary Award Fund would have the funds available over its lifespan to pay all claimants at these significant award levels.”
Judge Brody said economists who conducted an analysis on behalf of the retired players believed that the sum was enough. That report, though, wasn’t submitted in...

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Sunday, January 12, 2014

With N.F.L. Concussion Deal, Two Tiers of Payouts

Today's post was shared by The New York Times and comes from www.nytimes.com

Court settlements are by nature compromises, and compromises are often messy. The proposed settlement of the lawsuits brought by more than 4,500 former N.F.L. players who contended that the league hid from them the dangers of concussions is no exception.

The N.F.L. agreed last summer to pay $765 million for medical monitoring and potential payments to those with significant illnesses, but it wanted all 18,000 or so retired players, not just those who sued, to be included in the deal.

By expanding the number of players who could benefit, the N.F.L. would help more former players. But anyone who agrees to the settlement will give up the right to sue the league, so the N.F.L. would also largely inoculate itself from further costly and embarrassing suits.

Yet one of the consequences of this structure is that it creates two tiers of retired players: those who sued the league and must pay their lawyers a percentage of any cash awards, and those who never sued the league but are eligible to receive money without paying legal fees. In effect, the players who took the initiative to sue and helped push the league to settle will be penalized. That structure irks some retired players, like Frank Sutton, who played one season as a Giants tackle.

“I believe in equity, and I believe in being involved in something and being held to...

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Tuesday, January 7, 2014

NFL concussion payout formula would provide up to $5 million per retired player

Today's post is shared from nola.com

Lawyers representing former NFL players in the proposed $765 million settlement of thousands of concussion-related claims detailed Monday how the money would be divided.

The awards could reach $5 million for athletes with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease; $4 million for a death involving brain trauma; and $3 million for dementia cases.
Under the payout formula, those maximum awards would go to players under 45, who would likely need more lifetime care. For a man in his early 60s, the awards top out at $3 million for ALS and $950,000 for Alzheimer's disease. An 80-year-old with early dementia would get $25,000.
Individual awards would also reflect how long the player spent in the NFL, unrelated medical issues and other factors. For instance, the award could be reduced significantly if someone had injuries from an unrelated stroke or car accident. Men without any neurological problems would get baseline testing, and could seek compensation if test reveal any problems.
"This is an extraordinary settlement for retired NFL players and their families -- from those who suffer with severe neurocognitive illnesses today, to those who are currently healthy but fear they may develop symptoms decades into the future," lead players' lawyers...

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Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Five Former N.F.L. Players Sue the Chiefs Over Head Injuries

Today's post was shared by The New York Times and comes from www.nytimes.com

Five former Kansas City Chiefs sued the team Tuesday for not warning them of the long-term dangers of concussions they say they received during their playing days.

The suit, filed in circuit court in Jackson County, Mo., is one of the first concussion-related cases against a specific N.F.L. team, and may lead to other suits.

The case against the Chiefs echoes the suits brought by thousands of N.F.L. retirees, who accused the league of negligence and fraud and sought actual and punitive damages.

In August, the N.F.L. agreed to pay $765 million to settle those cases and avoid what was sure to be a lengthy, costly and embarrassing trial. The league did not admit that it hid information on the long-term effects of head trauma from its players, as was claimed in the original complaint.

In settling the case before going to trial, the league left the door open for retirees to make other legal challenges.

The case by the five former Chiefs seeks to exploit a critical question unanswered in the suits against the N.F.L.: whether concussion-related cases should be heard by an arbitrator under the auspices of the league’s collective bargaining agreement.

Alexander Cooper, Leonard Griffin, Christopher Martin, Joseph Phillips and Kevin Porter, the plaintiffs, played all or parts of their careers from August 1987 to March 1993, when there was no collective bargaining agreement.

They also sued the Chiefs, and not the league, because under Missouri law, employees can sue...

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Monday, November 11, 2013

California Tossed Out NFL Players Brain Injury Claim: Time To Change The System?

While professional teams in California have sheltered themselves from workers' compensation claims, the injuries have not gone away. Workers' compensation has long been a vehicle to insulate employers and their insurance carriers from the payment of benefits. With the erosion of workers' compensation as a functional benefit program, many experts are now calling for its elimination altogether and merely allow the claims to proceed in the civil justice system. Today's post is shared from sportsworldnews.com .

A California workers panel threw out former Dallas Cowboy Tony Dorsett's brain-injury claim just months before he was diagnosed with initial signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

The diagnosis of Dorsett, the 59-year-old Hall of Fame running back, was made public Wednesday when two UCLA researchers found that Dorsett, Hall of Fame offensive lineman Joe DeLamielleure and former All-Pro defensive lineman Leonard Marshall showed signs of CTE, a degenerative disease that has been linked to head trauma.
The condition has led to depression, dementia and suicide in former NFL players.
Dorsett's claim was denied in May when a workers compensation judge ruled that Dorsett agreed to an $85,000 settlement for injuries to "multiple orthopaedic body parts" in 1991, the Times reported. Therefore, the player was not allowed to file any more claims for subsequent injury, according to state records.
Dorsett appealed that workers'...

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Friday, November 8, 2013

State panel rejected injury claim by NFL's Dorsett

Today's post was shared from the latimes.org.

A brain-injury claim by former National Football League player Tony Dorsett was thrown out by a California workers' compensation panel just months before he was diagnosed with early signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a debilitating condition linked to repeated blows to the head.

The 59-year-old Hall of Fame running back's claim was dismissed in May when a workers' compensation judge ruled that because Dorsett had agreed to an $85,000 settlement for injuries to "multiple orthopaedic body parts" in 1991, he could not file another claim for any subsequent injury, state records show.
On Wednesday it was revealed that researchers at UCLA had found that Dorsett and two other former NFL players showed signs of CTE. The degenerative disease has been found in the autopsied brains of dozens of former NFL players, among them Junior Seau and Dave Duerson. But only recently have diagnoses in living subjects been possible.
Dorsett appealed that workers' compensation decision, but it was upheld in August. A three-judge panel found that language in the 1991 settlement released the Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos from all future claims involving virtually any body part, including the head.
Mel Owens, Dorsett's attorney, said Thursday that he was not available to discuss the case, which claimed cumulative head injuries but did not specify CTE. Owens had 45 days to appeal the decision to the California Court of Appeal, but court records indicate no such action has been...

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Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Study: No helmet brand can save football players from concussion risk

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.latimes.com

Health experts have some bad news for high school football players: There is no particular type or brand of helmet or mouth guard that will keep you relatively safe from a concussion.

The companies that make helmets and mouth guards often claim that their own products can reduce players’ risk of a sports-related concussion or lessen the impact of a concussion that does occur. These manufacturers cite “laboratory research” that purports to show one brand is safer than others, and a group of researchers wanted to see if they could verify such claims, according to a summary of a presentation they made Monday at a national meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The research team, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin, tracked 1,332 high school football players from 36 schools during the 2012 season. Participating players completed a preseason questionnaire about their injury history and demographic information. Then, as the season progressed, athletic trainers from the schools kept tabs on the incidence and severity of any concussions that occurred.
At the start of the study, 171 of the players — or 13% — told the researchers that they had experienced a sports-related concussion in the previous 12 months. During the 2012 football season, an additional 116 concussions were sustained by 115 players — 8.6% of the student athletes in the study.
When the researchers compared...

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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

DePaolo's Work Comp World: Genetic Testing?!

Today's post was shared by WorkCompCentral and comes from daviddepaolo.blogspot.com

The reason lawmakers and regulators create rules that seem onerous and ponderous to the vast majority of us is because there are "outliers" that ruin it for everyone else because of indescribably selfish behavior.
There's always someone taking a new angle to take advantage of the liberal rules of workers' compensation for their own profit regardless of the social consequences. This seems particularly acute in California, but nevertheless occurs in other jurisdictions too.
Recently posted in the WorkCompCentral Forums was an inquiry as to whether anyone else in the community is starting to see bills for unsolicited services related to genetic testing for drug addition predisposition.
The author of the post, an attorney for the employer/carrier, says that the case in question had been settled. In preparing the settlement documents a review of California's Electronic Adjudication Management System database was conducted to identify all parties. Nearly all lien claims had been settled, but one remained stubbornly immovable (and I'm not even clear that the parties were ever properly served and/or noticed of this particular vendor until the end of the case).
For this one particular lien the claim file notes apparently show a request for billing and report after discovery of the vendor in the EAMS search. The carrier got fax copies of a bill and report with a demand for payment.
The bill was for $3,626.00 for the genetic testing.
According to the post, the initial report, based on an...

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Sunday, October 20, 2013

The Damage Done

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

The government is reopening, and we didn’t default on our debt. Happy days are here again, right?

Well, no. For one thing, Congress has only voted in a temporary fix, and we could find ourselves going through it all over again in a few months. You may say that Republicans would be crazy to provoke another confrontation. But they were crazy to provoke this one, so why assume that they’ve learned their lesson?

Beyond that, however, it’s important to recognize that the economic damage from obstruction and extortion didn’t start when the G.O.P. shut down the government. On the contrary, it has been an ongoing process, dating back to the Republican takeover of the House in 2010. And the damage is large: Unemployment in America would be far lower than it is if the House majority hadn’t done so much to undermine recovery.

A useful starting point for assessing the damage done is a widely cited report by the consulting firm Macroeconomic Advisers, which estimated that “crisis driven” fiscal policy — which has been the norm since 2010 — has subtracted about 1 percent off the U.S. growth rate for the past three years. This implies cumulative economic losses — the value of goods and services that America could and should have produced, but didn’t — of around $700 billion. The firm also estimated that unemployment is 1.4 percentage points higher than it would have been in the absence of political confrontation,...

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Copyright

Monday, August 18, 2014

State Sen. Leland Yee allegedly solicited bribes for NFL Workers’ Compensation Law

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Trickle Down Consequences of Professional Athletic Head Injuries

Friday, January 31, 2014

Football: The Business of Uncompensated Injuries

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Uncertainty Over Whether N.F.L. Settlement’s Money Will Last

Friday, January 17, 2014

Judge Refuses to Sign Off on NFL Settlement

Sunday, January 12, 2014

With N.F.L. Concussion Deal, Two Tiers of Payouts

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

NFL concussion payout formula would provide up to $5 million per retired player

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Five Former N.F.L. Players Sue the Chiefs Over Head Injuries

Monday, November 11, 2013

California Tossed Out NFL Players Brain Injury Claim: Time To Change The System?

Friday, November 8, 2013

State panel rejected injury claim by NFL's Dorsett

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Study: No helmet brand can save football players from concussion risk

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

DePaolo's Work Comp World: Genetic Testing?!

Sunday, October 20, 2013

The Damage Done

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