Report: NFL Concussion Settlement Becomes Official After Supreme Court Rejects Case
By Matt Dolloff, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- After five-plus years of lawsuits, appeals, petitions, and complaints, the NFL and a vast group of former players will officially settle their long-standing legal battle over concussions and CTE after the Supreme Court rejected the latest request to review the case. Daniel Wallach first reported the news on Twitter.
First filed in 2011 by a group that grew to over 20,000 former NFL players, the concussion lawsuit first reached a settlement in August 2013. A federal judge approved the settlement in April 2015 after ordering revisions to be made. Payments could have started as soon as that summer, but multiple appeals from the players held up the settlement process. A federal appeals court upheld the settlement in April, which then went to the third circuit court of appeals, which rejected the petition to review the case.
The third circuit's rejection left the Supreme Court as the players' only recourse for appeals. Petitions were filed in August and September, but the Supreme Court's rejection made the settlement official. Payouts from the NFL to an estimated 6,000 out of 20,000 potential former players, according to the L.A. Times, will now be set in motion.
Players appealed the approved 2015 settlement mainly due to a lack of payouts for future CTE diagnosis in former players after the April 2015 cutoff. CTE currently cannot be diagnosed or detected in living patients.
The payouts from the NFL to the former players is expected to total as much as $1 billion over the next 65 years. Individual payouts for players who suffer from Alzheimer's will average about $190,000 and be as much as $3.5 million, according to the L.A. Times. Payouts for individual players are capped at $1.5 million for "moderate dementia" and $5 million for ALS.
The settlement cuts off compensation for families of former players who died before April 2006. This means that the family of former Steelers offensive lineman Mike Webster, the first NFL player to be diagnosed with CTE after he died in 2002, likely won't be compensated as part of the settlement.
Now that the NFL will begin compensating former players and their families, the league's potential for future legal trouble regarding head injuries is significantly lower. The league's continued focus on reducing, preventing, and understanding head injuries - and passing that knowledge along to its players - will do more to hold players liable for their own decisions to play professional football and make the league safer from future litigation.
The settlement may be official and the NFL will certainly do more to curb head injuries in the future than they did in the past, but it doesn't change the unfortunate reality that concussions remain a significant problem in professional football. The league's continued efforts to prevent head injuries could leave the sport looking entirely different in the future.
Matt Dolloff is a writer for CBSBostonSports.com. Any opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect that of CBS or 98.5 The Sports Hub. Have a news tip or comment for Matt? Follow him on Twitter @mattdolloff and email him at mdolloff@985thesportshub.com.