For many players in the National Football League, playing with pain has always been part of the game. However, as the game has changed, a greater emphasis has been placed on safety, as well as protecting the health of players. This has been seen not only with changes regarding concussion protocol, but also with various prescription painkillers given to players. As a result, a number of former players have filed lawsuits over the years against the NFL, claiming they were illegally given powerful painkillers by their teams simply to keep them on the field. After years of back-and-forth court hearings, a United States Appeals Court recently reinstated a class-action lawsuit filed by several players over this alleged practice.
According to a three-judge panel from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the lawsuit should be allowed to proceed due to it not being superseded by existing labor agreements between players and their teams. This decision, which was unanimous among the panel’s judges, means the NFL’s claim that the collective bargaining agreement that is already in place has little bearing on the merits of the lawsuit. According to league officials and lawyers, their belief is that the players should not have been allowed to pursue a lawsuit until all grievance procedures within the collective bargaining agreement had been exhausted.
This argument by the league, which had proven to be used successfully in 2014 when U.S. District Judge William Alsup dismissed the lawsuit due to his believing that the collective bargaining grievance procedure was the proper forum, failed to sway the judges from the Appeals Court. According to Circuit Judge Richard Tallman, the players’ claims do not revolve around a dispute over the rights created by the collective bargaining agreement. Instead, it deals with possible detrimental conduct the judges consider to be completely outside the scope of the existing CBA.
According to numerous plaintiffs in the lawsuit, such as NFL players Jim McMahon, Richard Dent, and Jeremy Newberry, the NFL never warned them about the long-term consequences associated with taking the powerful painkillers. As a result, the players contest taking these drugs over an extended period of time has left them with various types of chronic health problems, such as memory loss, fatigue, and other issues.
While the players involved in the lawsuit have achieved a legal victory with the ruling from the Appeals Court, that does not mean the case will ultimately be decided in their favor. By the Appeals Court taking this action, the lawsuit now goes back to Judge Alsup for additional court hearings. In their ruling, the judges stated they had no opinion regarding the merits of the players’ claims, noting that the lawsuit could still be dismissed on other grounds at a later date.
Due to the possibility of the lawsuit’s eventual dismissal at a later date, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy released a statement saying the league still does believe the lawsuit will be thrown out upon further examination by the courts. Noting that claims brought forth by various plaintiffs have been dismissed along the way for various reasons, McCarthy stated the NFL is confident it will eventually win the case.
Based on claims by players, teams regularly gave them large amounts of opioids, anti-inflammatory medications, and local anesthesia, all without written prescriptions. In some instances, players claimed they were simply given groups of pills in manila envelopes that contained no directions or labeling, and were told simply to take everything in the envelope. While both sides believes they will eventually come away with a win, it remains to be seen how future rulings will play out.
Learn more about Drug Lawsuits.