Judge to determine fairness of NFL settlement Wednesday

A judge will rule at a fairness hearing on Wednesday whether the largest lawsuit in the history of professional sports adequately compensates former NFL players.

The hearing stems from an objection by the family of Dave Duerson, former Chicago Bears defensive back, over compensation for players who suffered from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease with debilitating symptoms that can lead to dementia, aggression, impaired judgment and confusion. It will mark one of the final steps of a case originally filed by University of Richmond alumni Mary Ann and Ray Easterling, Richmond College '72.

Duerson committed suicide in February 2011 with a gunshot to the chest. Duerson had previously voiced his strong beliefs that brain damage was not a big factor for NFL players after their careers ended. However, Duerson left a note before his death that read, “Please, see that my brain is given to the N.F.L.’s brain bank.”

Ray Easterling also committed suicide with a gun in his Richmond home in 2012.

“His brain was hurting,” Mary Ann, Ray’s wife, said about his suicide. “You want to help them … but when there’s something physiologically wrong, there’s nothing you can do.”

Both men were confirmed to have CTE in post-mortem evaluations.

In August 2011, the Easterlings filed a lawsuit with six other NFL players claiming that the NFL withheld knowledge of the connection between head injuries and football; a reality that had led Duerson, and would later lead Easterling, into a spiral of brain damage and depression that triggered both of their suicides.

The original lawsuit included only seven NFL players, but has grown into a joint-plaintiff settlement that includes nearly 5,000 people, covers nearly 20,000 former players and could reach over $1 billion in damages.

The fairness hearing Wednesday is one of the last hurdles before the settlement is finalized. Judge Anita Brody, who will oversee the case, has a significant amount of discretion in deciding whether the settlement is fair.

A Harvard Law blog summarizes the settlement payouts for CTE, the subject of the Duerson family objection. “Under the proposed settlement, only those who died between January 1, 2006 and July 7, 2014 and were diagnosed post-mortem with CTE can receive any compensation,” according to the blog.

Despite the fact that many former players have likely been suffering from CTE for decades, neither they nor their families will receive proper compensation under the agreement because those players did not die this summer.

CTE was first discovered in 2002 in the brain of deceased Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster. Like many victims of CTE, Webster led a bizarre life after he retired – he lived out of his truck and electrocuted himself to fall asleep.

Four years later, former NFL safety Andre Waters committed suicide. The neuropathologist who analyzed his brain found Waters to also have had CTE, and said his brain had deteriorated like that of an 85-year-old. Waters died at age 44.

The disease has even been found in six deceased high school players as young as 17 years old.

Leading experts on CTE now think that all football players may be susceptible. Since CTE can only be diagnosed post-mortem, evidence is only available from dead players.

“Most NFL players are going to get this, it’s just a matter of degree,” said Ann McKee, one of the leading experts on CTE. As of September 2014, the disease has been found in 76 of 79 studied brains of former NFL players.

Although the emergence of CTE was the discovery of a previously unknown, unidentified disease, the NFL ignored and denied its existence and attempted to undermine the initial research linking it to football, according to reports by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru.

One NFL-funded study published in 2005 found that “professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis.”

The misleading studies that the NFL published, along with the independent research it ignored, are both major factors in the lawsuit, according to the documents Ray Easterling’s group filed.

The NFL admitted this past September that one in three NFL players would experience brain damage.

Contact Collegian reporter Daniel Heifetz at danny.heifetz@richmond.edu.