Pa. court sides with NCAA in appeal by ex-football player with ALS
A Pennsylvania court rejected the appeal of a former football player who alleged the NCAA should have prevented the injuries that caused him to become disabled.
The appeal, filed by Matthew Onyshko and his wife, Jessica, was unsuccessful because the Pennsylvania Superior Court found no problems with the original ruling by the Washington County Court of Common Pleas.
Mr. Onyshko, who played football for California University of Pennsylvania from 1999 to 2003, sued the NCAA because he experienced repeated blows to the head during his athletic career and said the athletic organization should have known such trauma can lead to long-term medical conditions like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which Mr. Onyshko developed.
After a nearly three-week trial in May 2019, the jury returned its verdict in favor of the NCAA and said the organization was not negligent.
In post-trial motions, Mr. Onyshko challenged the lower court’s refusal to admit testimony from a doctor he selected while allowing opinions from medical experts chosen by the NCAA.
Common Pleas Judge Michael J. Lucas did not allow testimony from the doctor because the findings were not in line with the generally accepted medical methodology. The court did allow several other statements and pieces of evidence about head trauma and ALS offered by Mr. Onyshko.
Mr. Onyshko also asserted that a mistrial should have been declared after the NCAA’s closing argument. He claimed the athletic organization’s lead counsel improperly offered commentary on evidence presented during the trial and gave a statement of personal opinion.
The attorneys told the jury that Mr. Onyshko and his counsel “came up with a
new disease. You have never seen it in print other than a slide made up by counsel, [called] football ALS.”
But the judge found no issue. “In this instance, the expressions of personal opinion by the NCAA’s counsel amount to no more than oratorical flair that is coincident with the adversarial process and attendant
to a long trial involving complex science,” Judge Lucas wrote.
The Superior Court affirmed the judge’s ruling and adopted it as its own, attaching the 47-page opinion to their four-page memorandum filed on Friday.