Former high school football star sues over concussions

[WhiskeyGrinder]

http://www.invw.org/2019/03/28/former-high-school-football-star-sues-over-concussions/

PORTLAND – Former Parkrose High School football star Jonathan Boland, whose concussion history and tailspin into crime were profiled in the “Rattled” concussion series, has filed a lawsuit against the Parkrose School District alleging that the district committed child abuse and negligence by failing to protect him under the Oregon concussion law.

The former quarterback received an athletic scholarship to Portland State University but was unable to play due to the damage caused by his concussions.

Now he is seeking $950,000 in damages, including $750,000 for “physical pain and suffering, permanent injuries, anxiety, depression, embarrassment.”

The lawsuit filed March 18 in Multnomah County Circuit Court alleges that Boland showed signs of a concussion throughout high school and shouldn’t have been allowed to return to play, even with a medical release.

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Just the start.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. Agree. If there are ever grandchildren in my life, I imagine that they will be horrified to learn

that their parents and grandparents played football.

[Wellstone ruled]

6. To many unqualified

Coaches and persons running Athletic Departments. Especially in Football and Hockey. Bump Phillips changed the style of blocking and tackling in Football,head hunters ruled the field. Hockey was messed up in the Juniors with the Goon Squad Coaching by Coaches who were Hockey flops.

[Aristus]

2. This is a difficult topic to navigate.

On the one hand, medical knowledge about the harmful effects of multiple concussions has been covered up or ignored for years. The people who did the ignoring or covering up should face consequences for it.

OTOH, this young man knowingly and voluntarily played a game in which the object of moving the ball down the field to the goal has long been overtaken by the objective of the players hitting each other as hard as they can, over and over and over again.

My one season playing junior high football was enough for me. Once I got flattened enough times, I said: "I'm out! This sucks."

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. There is the "knowingly and voluntarily" aspect to it, but for some of those years, he was a minor,

and minors do have legal protection, even if they consent to certain actions.

[gratuitous]

5. This young man was not of legal age to consent

He suffered his concussions in high school at an age when he couldn't legally sign a contract in this country. Curiously, it's at this age that young men are subjected to the most pressure in our society to engage in risky behavior like smoking and joining the military. Tobacco companies and the government don't pitch those activities to men in their 30s for some reason. But teen-agers get the full force of marketing research and psychological pressure to sign up for dangerous activities. The fall back positions include "knowingly and voluntarily" or "this dangerous activity is perfectly legal."

[exboyfil]

9. If the NFL has to pay

it is logical that high schools and colleges are also culpable. In fact a significant portion of the damage probably occurred during the high school and college portions of the NFL player's career.

Eventually folks are going to look at CTE for college players who never went to the NFL. I bet they find a statistical link like for the NFL players. Same can probably be said for high school.

https://qz.com/1302232/the-fate-of-ncaa-football-is-tied-up-in-a-new-brain-injury-lawsuit/

http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/23806167/ncaa-wife-ex-texas-longhorns-dt-greg-ploetz-settle-cte-lawsuit

[Mosby]

7. you forgot the link.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

8. Whoops, thanks for the reminder! Added.

[Mosby]

10. should be interesting to see how this goes.

If cases like this are successful, high school and college football is doomed. Some schools are already dropping football because of the cost of insurance.

Eta the lawyers have their eyes on soccer as well.

[Hekate]

11. I hope he wins, and that this is the first of many...

It's a funny thing about what is and is not common medical knowledge, and my late mother is a bit of a touchstone for me in that regard. She was born in 1924, and I guess you could call her an educated housewife, in that she went to college until her scholarship ran out.

But while raising 4 kids on dad's blue collar paycheck, she kept reading and reading, and now that I look back I realize how much science sunk into me -- not from school but from her. DDT? Asbestos? She knew about those things in the early 1950s and told me when I was quite a young thing. "Oh, I stopped making candied orange-peel because they're sprayed with DDT and it can't be washed off." "Don't handle the rest-pad for the steam iron, dear. It's made of asbestos, which gets into your body and never comes out."

Her older brothers played high school football in the late 1920s/early 1930s, wearing leather helmets. They grew up to be successful men. But something about a known percentage of football players becoming permanently addled (i.e. brain damaged in some way) meant that she absolutely refused to sign off on my youngest brother joining his high school football team, no matter what kind of helmet he wore.

My point is: We knew this. It's now made some spectacular news because pro-football stars commit suicide or otherwise self-destruct. But the information has been around for a very, very long time. And people just effing don't pay attention until the lawsuits pile up. Not the broken bodies, the lawsuits. So I hope this kid wins.