CONCUSSION SUIT VS. NCAA MAY GO TO JURY
A lawsuit alleging the NCAA failed to protect a former USC football player from repeated concussions is nearing trial in a Los Angeles court, with a jury seated Thursday in what could become a landmark case.
The suit filed by Matthew Gee’s widow says the former USC linebacker died in 2018 from permanent brain damage caused by countless blows to the head he took while playing for the 1990 Rose Bowl winning team, whose roster also included future NFL star Junior Seau.
Of the hundreds of wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits brought by college football players against the NCAA in the past decade, Gee’s is only the second to head toward trial and could be the first to reach a jury.
The issue of concussions in sports, and football in particular, has been front and center in recent years as research has discovered more about longterm effects of repeated head trauma in problems ranging from headaches to depression and, sometimes, early onset Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease.
“For years (the NCAA) has kept players like Matthew Gee and the public in the dark about an epidemic that was slowly killing college athletes,” Alana Gee’s lawsuit said. “Long after they played their last game, they are left with a series of neurological conditions that could slowly strangle their brains.”
The NCAA, the governing body of college athletics, said it wasn’t responsible for Gee’s tragic death, which it blamed on heavy drinking, drugs and other ailments.
“Mr. Gee used alcohol and drugs to cope with a traumatic childhood, to fill in the loss of identity he felt after his football playing days ended, and to numb the chronic and increasing pain caused by numerous health issues,” NCAA lawyers wrote in a court filing.
A 2018 trial in Texas led to a swift settlement after several days of testimony by witnesses for the plaintiff, the widow of Greg Ploetz, who played defense for Texas in the late 1960s.
In 2016, the NCAA agreed to settle a class-action concussion lawsuit, paying $70 million to monitor the medical conditions of former college athletes, another $5 million toward medical research and payments up to $5,000 toward individual players claiming injuries.
The NFL has been hit with similar suits and eventually agreed to a settlement covering 20,000 retired players providing up to $4 million for a death involving chronic traumatic encephalopathy, also known as CTE, a degenerative brain disease found in athletes and military veterans who suffered repetitive brain injuries.
Lawyers said they expected NFL payouts to top $1.4 billion over 65 years for six qualifying conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and dementia.
Gee, 49, was one of five linebackers on the 1989 Trojans squad who died before turning 50. As with Seau, who killed himself in 2012, Gee’s brain was examined posthumously and found to have CTE.
The defense has sought to exclude any testimony about Gee’s teammates, and the NCAA said there was no medical evidence Gee suffered from concussions at USC.
Two ex-teammates, however, testified at depositions about blows they routinely took in an era when they were told to hit with their heads.
Mike Salmon, who played defense at USC and went on to the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers and Buffalo Bills, said he distinctly recalled Gee and other linebackers being “out of it” during hard-hitting practices.
“Matt hit like a truck,” Salmon said. “I saw him quite a bit coming back to the huddle. You could tell he wasn’t all there.”
“It was our job to make helmet-to-helmet contact in the ’80s,” Gene Fruge, a former nose-tackle testified. “There was no question about it. That was your job, to explode the man in front of you.”
The NCAA, which required schools in 2010 to have a concussion protocol, said it gave them “state-of-the-art” information about head injury risks known at the time Gee played. It said long-term effects of head injuries weren’t well understood then.