Former players’ legal fight against NFL over alleged controversial concussion policies intensifies – NFL News
The legal pressure on the National Football League (NFL) over its concussion policies has intensified by the filing of a couple of more lawsuits by more former players and their families accusing the league office of mishandling the head injuries to the
players and seeking compensation against the sufferings they and their families had been through as result of those injuries.
The latest lawsuits come after more than dozen of them before a number of courts throughout the United States are waiting hearing, respectively.
One suit, which has been filed in the Philadelphia, has five former NFL players and their families as affected parties, who have accused the league office of fraud and negligence as well as hiding of the information around the injuries.
The other lawsuit has 42 players and 23 members of their families as plaintiffs, who too have alleged the league of committing same negligence.
All of them are seeking compensation from the league office over alleged mishandling of their head injuries. They said that the office had hidden information around the concussions, which aggravated their injuries and problems as a result of those.
It is yet again that the NFL has come into the limelight of the legal fight waged by its former players.
The office has already been confronting other lawsuits filed in different courts by its former players representing different teams on the NFL.
The NFL has defended itself against those on more than one occasion, saying that the protection and safety of his players had always been a priority for it and that he has taken measures to provide the players with a safe and healthy environment to play
in.
It has appealed for consolidation of all those suits before one judge, and a final decision on its plea is pending yet.
Some of the former players, in their respective suits, have accused the league office of allowing excessive pre-game use of pain killers and hiding of concussions by labelling them as dementia and other diseases.
The office has also been accused of leniency against the players who are found to have committed the fouls resulting in concussions.
One such example is of Pittsburgh Steelers’ linebacker, James Harrison, who has developed a reputation of the most daring defender on the league, and as a result of his attitude of going rough against quarterbacks, has been found inflicting head injuries
on a number of players.
Harrison is the only player to have been suspended for one game under the enhanced safety measures by the NFL.
He was involved in a helmet-to-helmet hit on Cleveland Browns’ quarterback, Colt McCoy, in the later part of the 2011 NFL regular season.
It was his fifth foul in last two years and some football quarters believe the punishment of the one-game ban was not enough to discipline him.
McCoy was third player of Browns to have been knocked down by Harrison over the period of past two years, and a number of the Browns have blamed him of playing ‘dirty’ in the games.
"You can view live coverage and analysis of the Super Bowl XLVI by Zach Norman and Robert California”
Tags: