NHL: Here’s what we know about concussion lawsuit
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman will be in the hot seat today.
Bettman will be surrounded by lawyers acting for players suing the league over concussions suffered while playing, who will be asking him all about what he and the league know or believe about repeated head trauma, and what he did or didn’t do to protect those players.
Bettman’s deposition promises to be the most significant development so far in the concussion lawsuit that is plodding its way through the U.S. legal system.
Like all that have been deposed before him — including Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan — Bettman’s testimony about what he knew and what the league knew about the effect of repeated head trauma on players will be sealed, hidden from public scrutiny.
U.S. district court judge Susan Nelson will rule — perhaps before NHL training camps begin in September — whether to unseal the depositions to allow the public to know fully what both sides have been arguing.
Until then, here’s what we know:
Why a lawsuit?
About 60 former NHL players — including Gary Leeman, and Bernie Nicholls — allege the league engaged in a decades-long plan to conceal from the players the risks of concussions and developing serious brain diseases from playing hockey in the NHL. The players say the league was motivated to do so to “generate billions of dollars in revenues, often using extreme violence as a commodity in the sale and promotion of the league.”
Why depose Bettman?
As commissioner, Bettman is the chief spokesman for the league. Bettman will be asked about the league’s concussion study and about his pronouncements that it’s unclear whether hockey caused brain injuries and what the basis for that belief is.
Bettman, for example, took a fair bit of heat from the medical community in May, following the death of former NHLer Steve Montador, when asked about the link between repeated head trauma and chronic traumatic encephalopathy — or CTE, which was found in Montador’s brain.
“From a medical science standpoint, there is no evidence yet that one necessarily leads to the other,” Bettman told reporters in Chicago. “I know there are a lot of theories, but if you ask people who study it, they tell you there is no statistical correlation that can definitively make that conclusion.”
How much money is at stake?
Undetermined right now, but the NFL and its retired players settled a similar lawsuit. That agreement provides up to $5 million per retired player for serious medical conditions associated with repeated head trauma. That agreement, by the way, does not stand as a legal precedent. But it could stand as a kind of road map to a negotiated settlement between the NHL and its retired players.
What’s next?
Lawyers for the players will argue this month that depositions and documents related to player injuries ought to be unsealed so they can fall into the public record. It may end up that the players’ names and anything that would identify a player will be kept a secret so as not to violate player privacy rights regarding medical information.
At the same time depositions will continue through the discovery process. The lawyers for the players have more of league owners, trainers and medical experts to talk with. The league may also depose the expert witnesses for the players.
This is going to take a while, isn’t it?
Yes. By the end of this year, the lawyers for the players hope to have the lawsuit certified as a class action, meaning they represent all retired players whether they are signatories to the lawsuit or not.
The earliest the case could go to trial is the summer of 2016.