Former Football Players and Their Families Fight to Hold Riddell Liable for Brain Injuries
Each fall, football players across America take the field to face off against each other for four intense quarters week after week. The sport is one of the most popular sports to play among young males in the United States. According to a survey conducted by The National Federation of State High School Associations, 1,006,013 high school males participated in football during the 2018–19 academic year.[1]. These young players—equipped in shoulder pads, knee pads, mouth guards, and helmets—tackle, block, and run over each other to advance the ball toward the endzone. However, despite their protective gear, many players still sustain traumatic head injuries, resulting in long-term neurological damage, as well as death.[2] Injured athletes and suffering family members have filed lawsuits to hold helmet manufacturers liable.[3] At the center of these lawsuits is the world’s leading manufacturer of football helmets—Riddell Sports Group (“Riddell”).[4]
In 2013, 1,000 former NFL players filed a lawsuit against Riddell alleging that Riddell knew about the risk of concussion but failed to take any action to make their helmets more protective.[5] Some players that wore the helmets between 1989 and 2013 developed long-term brain injuries, such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (“CTE”).[6] CTE is a degenerative brain disease that affects a person’s mood and behavior.[7] For example, CTE can cause “impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and paranoia.[8] As the disease progresses, some patients may experience problems with “thinking and memory, including memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, and eventually progressive dementia.”[9] Former New York Giant Leonard Marshall, a plaintiff in the 2013 lawsuit, developed CTE after taking numerous hits to the head.[10] He claimed that, had he known about the helmets, he would have worn a better one.[11]
On September 2014, Chelsea Oliver filed suit against Riddell, the NFL, and others after her husband—former San Diego Chargers player Paul Oliver—committed suicide by self-inflicted gunshot.[12]. She claimed that Riddell and the league “conspired to cover up the danger of concussions and the inability of Riddell helmets to protect against them, contributing to her husband’s death.”[13] Oliver voluntarily dismissed her suit and opted in to multidistrict litigation against the NFL.[14] However, on March 11, 2016, Oliver and her two sons re-filed suit against Riddell claiming the company and its associates should be held liable for Paul Oliver’s death.[15] Furthermore, Oliver alleged that the companies conspired to conceal from players “the problem of concussions in football and the resulting brain damage that led to degenerative brain conditions and mental illness in players.”[16] That same year, in July, another suit was filed in Cook County against Riddell. In the July suit, former NFL player Paul Hornung asserted that the Riddell failed to warn him and other players that their helmets would not prevent head concussions despite the company knowing about the dangers of brain trauma.[17] One week later, a group of former NFL players, including former Steelers Pro Bowl receiver Yancey Thigpen, filed a similar lawsuit against Riddell.[18] These players also alleged that the helmet manufacturer did not warn them about the long-term health risks that the helmets would not protect them from.[19] Professional football players and their families are not the only ones that have filed suit against Riddell. High school and college players have brought claims after suffering from similar injuries.
On January 30, 2017, thirty-four former college football players filed a class action complaint against Riddell and its subsidiaries.[20] The plaintiffs argued that Riddell “knowingly and negligently developed, designed, tested, marketed, promoted, advertised, distributed and sold dangerous and defective football helmets that lacked critical and accurate safety information relating to the products.”[21] As a direct result, the plaintiffs “suffered permanent injuries and/or were left at an elevated risk for grievous injuries and latent damages” to the brain.[22] Furthermore, the plaintiffs alleged that Riddell failed to warn that the helmet would not protect players “from head trauma, repetitive head impacts, and concussions.”[23] In a similar class action suit, another group of former players filed a lawsuit against Riddell.[24] The putative class, which included high school and college football players who used Riddell helmets between 1975 and 2019, claimed that they suffered head injuries that could have been avoided if Riddell’s helmets lived up to their advertised effectiveness.[25] Riddell “moved to strike the plaintiff’s class allegations under Rules 12(f) and 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.”[26]
In that suit, Riddell mainly focused on Rule 23(b)(3), which states that a class action may be “maintained if Rule 23(a) is satisfied and if . . . (3) the court finds that the questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members, and that a class action is superior to other available methods for fairly and efficiently adjudicating the controversy.”[27] The company argued that the putative class’s claims raised individualized questions of causation and damages.[28] The claims, by their very nature, precluded class treatment.[29] Furthermore, Riddell argued that the class action “calls for the application of eighteen different states’ laws to the class’s claims, defeating predominance and superiority.”[30]. Lastly, Riddell highlighted that some class members initiated individual lawsuits.[31] Due to these individual lawsuits, Riddell argued that the plaintiffs could not demonstrate the superiority of class litigation.[32] Judge Matthew Kennelly of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled in favor of Riddell, finding that a class action would present “enormous manageability problems.”[33] While Riddell beat this particular class action, which tied brain injuries to the company’s helmets, Riddell still faces similar claims from individuals.
On May 29, 2016, Cody Hamblin, a twenty-two year-old former football player, was fishing with his grandfather on a boat when he suddenly had a seizure, causing him to fall into the water and drown.[34] After studying his brain, doctors determined that Hamblin suffered from CTE.[35] However, the doctors could not determine if the CTE caused the seizure.[36] On May 29, 2018, two years after Hamblin’s death, his father filed a suit against Riddell, presenting allegations of negligent misrepresentation, negligent product liability, fraud, and wrongful death.[37]. Riddell moved to dismiss the lawsuit, and on May 14, 2019, an Ohio judge ruled that five out of six of Hamblin’s claims against Riddell, including wrongful death, design defects, and manufacturing defects, could proceed to trial.[38] The judge threw out the plaintiff’s claim.[39] This ruling means that Riddell will have to defend itself from the allegations that the its helmets are responsible for Cody’s death.
In March 2019, Letitia Wilbourn filed a wrongful death suit against Riddell.[40] In those four years, he suffered fifteen concussions and numerous blows to the head.[41] On February 17, 2017, at the age of twenty-six, Myers took his own life.[42] Boston University doctors confirmed that Myers suffered from CTE due to the concussions and injuries from his high school football days.[43] Riddell and its parent company, BRG Sports, argued that their helmets had explicit warnings that they did not prevent concussions or brain injuries.[44] Additionally, Riddell moved to dismiss the suit, claiming that the statute of limitations ended in February 2019.[45] Riddell argued that “reliance on the statute of limitations not running was ‘speculative’” because Wilbourn failed to specifically point to the Illinois class action.[46] Still, Judge Mark T. Pittman, a federal judge, denied Riddell’s motion to dismiss, without providing a reason for his decision.[47] Like the Ohio court’s decision, this decision forces the prominent helmet manufacturer to defend itself against Wilbourn’s claims that the company’s football helmets were defective and led to the death of DuQuan Myers. It will be interesting to see how these lawsuits play out and what the effects will be on the future of player safety for both amateur and professional football players alike.
Footnotes
