The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday declined to hear appeals of the NFL concussion settlement, finally paving the way for the deal to close five years after the initial litigation was filed. The 65-year settlement could pay up to if not more than $1B in claims to former players, nearly 12,000 of whom have pre-registered. “Based upon registration rates and what that is foreshadowing, participating rates will likely exceed (what we had) when we were running our actuarial computations,” class co-counsel Chris Seeger said. The NFL admitted no guilt as part of the settlement, which will pay certain medical claims brought by former players. There are still roughly 150 individual lawsuits brought by retirees who opted out of the settlement. The appeals centered largely on the absence of the deal covering CTE (Daniel Kaplan, Staff Writer). In L.A., Nathan Fenno cites sources saying that about 6,000 of the estimated 20,000 living former players will be "eligible for compensation over the deal’s 65-year life." The settlement includes "payouts for a variety of conditions," including Alzheimer’s and ALS. The amounts will be "adjusted based on the player’s age at diagnosis, seasons in the NFL and other factors." Though the deal "doesn’t limit what the NFL could pay out, individual awards are capped" at $1.5M for moderate dementia to $5M for ALS. Many of the payouts are "projected to be lower." While the maximum payout for Alzheimer’s is $3.5M, the averaged payout is "expected to be $190,000 when experience and age are factored in." The deal will also "provide baseline testing for concussion-related problems and fund concussion research and education." The settlement "applies to all retired players ... regardless of whether they participated in the litigation" (L.A. TIMES, 12/13).
LANDMARK DEAL: In N.Y., Ken Belson reports the agreement is "by far the largest concussion-related settlement, and a landmark in light of the league’s repeated denials, made over many years, of the links between repeated head trauma and brain disease." The NCAA "agreed to a far smaller settlement, while the NHL is still fighting its former players, who have filed a suit largely similar to the one brought by the retired NFL players." Attorneys "could ask the court to reconsider its refusal, but legal experts said that would be a long shot" (N.Y. TIMES, 12/13).
