Several former college football players yesterday filed class-action lawsuits against their universities, conferences and the NCAA, "claiming negligence over their handling of head injuries," according to Ben Strauss of the N.Y. TIMES. The six cases filed yesterday "marks a new effort by athletes seeking financial relief for what they say are the lasting effects from concussions sustained in their college careers." Among the named defendants are Penn State, Vanderbilt, the Big Ten, SEC and Pac-12. The lawsuits "pertain only to football players and are separate from the original class action against the NCAA." Auburn, Georgia, Oregon and Utah also are "targeted, though only their conferences are named defendants, along with the NCAA, because of liability complications at some public institutions." The plaintiffs "had careers that spanned the decades before the NCAA began requiring its members to have concussion protocols" in '10. Temple law professor Hosea Harvey said that he was "skeptical of the litigation’s moving forward because proving negligence against the NFL was easier than it may prove to be against colleges" (N.Y. TIMES, 5/18). USA TODAY's Steve Berkowitz notes after an "initial settlement proposal in the national case was rejected by a federal judge, it was expanded to cover athletes in contact and non-contact sports." But a new version of the settlement proposal "involved the plaintiffs agreeing to waive their right to pursue personal-injury claims on a class-action basis." U.S. District Judge John Lee in January "gave preliminary approval to the new version of the settlement, provided that it included a series of modifications, the first of which was allowing plaintiffs to pursue personal-injury claims on a class-action basis as long as those suits didn’t seek a nationwide class or a class consisting of athletes from more than one NCAA school" (USA TODAY, 5/18).
