Trial is now underway in a football player’s concussion case against a college (Texas). A June 11, 2018 article at Quartz recaps some of the facts about the plaintiff, and possible implications for the sport at the college level.
LAW360 is covering the trial, as is Courtroom View Network. A June 13, 2018 article from LAW360 includes the following excerpts about opening arguments:
Law360 (June 13, 2018, 10:54 PM EDT) — The NCAA has known since the 1930s that football could lead to brain damage, counsel for the widow of a former University of Texas defensive lineman who had chronic traumatic encephalopathy told a Dallas jury during Wednesday opening statements in the first-ever trial concerning the NCAA’s alleged responsibility for a football player’s CTE.
During the first day of the trial before District Judge Ken Molberg, Eugene Egdorf of Shrader & Associates LLP told the jury his client Debra Hardin-Ploetz’s late husband, Greg Ploetz, was never given this crucial information before he made the decision to play college football, even though the NCAA, as the sport’s governing body, had promised to protect its athletes.
*** The NCAA had access to medical literature 90 years ago discussing “punch drunk syndrome” and the long-term, deleterious effects of concussions and repetitive head trauma, and even hired medical experts in 1933 to create a medical handbook — and then ignored the recommendations those experts gave about minimizing head trauma.”
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