Whether you believe the National Football League blatantly misled its players about the dangers of concussion, or whether you think anyone who straps on a helmet ought to know he's taking a risk, this much is clear: The looming legal battle between the NFL and its former players over the effects of head injuries is shaping up to be one of the more complicated tort claims in recent times.

Garo Yepremian played in the NFL from 1966 to 1981. Focus on Sport/Getty Images

Matt Futterman details challenges facing the NFL with respect to lawsuits it faces over head injuries to players in the past several decades. Among the questions: should ex-kickers join the suit. Photo: AP.

It isn't the number of plaintiffs or potential financial magnitude that's unprecedented. Class-action suits over things like poorly built cars have attracted far more complainants than the roughly 4,200 former NFL players who are suing the league. And no amount paid out by the NFL could approach the $206 billion tobacco companies agreed to pay in 1998 to settle claims that they misled the public about the health risks of smoking cigarettes.

What makes this litigation so complex are the tricky questions it poses. For example, is someone's mental deficit the result of injuries sustained in professional football, injuries from some other level of football, or just the vicissitudes of old age? And should former players who are asymptomatic be allowed to sue the NFL on grounds of potential future suffering?

Also yet to be settled: Should the more than 200 cases filed against the NFL—many featuring duplicate plaintiffs—be consolidated into one? And doesn't the act of rejoining the NFL after filing suit against it—as some plaintiffs have done—diminish the unforeseen-risk argument?

After all this is settled, and assuming the NFL is found liable, we'll have to wade into another issue: How much, and under what formula, should the victims be compensated?

By all accounts, any trial is probably years off. But lawyers for the NFL and the plaintiffs will square off for the first time next month before Judge Anita B. Brody in federal court in Philadelphia. The focus will be the NFL's motion to dismiss the case. It argues that the suits involve issues that should be handled through collective bargaining—an assertion the plaintiffs' attorneys dispute.

Should the suits go forward, the first order of business will be which plaintiffs to include. Within that collection of 4,200 plaintiffs there are linemen who banged their heads on practically every snap during a 15-year career and famous quarterbacks like the 53-year-old former Chicago Bears star, Jim McMahon, whose early-stage dementia has made him one of the faces of the concussion litigation.








Scott Player had a 10-year NFL career. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Another former kicker who has joined the litigation is 43-year-old Scott Player, who punted 727 times during a 10-year career ending in 2007 and served as a holder on field goals. Player said he suffered his most devastating hit on a blown field goal against the Detroit Lions in 1998. Seeking to recover a ball that ricocheted near the sideline, he said he took a helmet-to-helmet hit on his ear hole.

"I don't know what happened after that," he said. "I just remember my jaw was on fire." Player made his way to the bench and finished the game.

Plaintiffs' attorneys are seeking not only damages for diagnosed brain injury but also funds to create a monitoring system for retirees who are largely asymptomatic.

The looming threat of possible future symptoms is what prompted Player, now a salesman for a Florida air-conditioning company, to sign on. He said he wants to protect himself if he begins to experience what other retirees are going through.

"I'm just trying to cover my bases," he said.

It's possible the suit will be thrown out next month, although the plaintiffs would likely appeal. The NFL has won dismissal before on grounds that a matter belonged not in the courts but as part of the collective-bargaining process between the league and its players.

Most notably, it won that argument after the filing of a wrongful death claim by the widow of Korey Stringer, the Minnesota Vikings lineman who died of heatstroke during training camp. The league's lawyers will also argue that the number of suits and the disparate circumstances of the plaintiffs make the case too varied to qualify as a class action.

"These claims—like personal injury claims generally—cannot be decided on a class-wide basis because they turn on individual issues such as each player's medical condition and injury history," NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said.

In arguing for class-action status, players' lawyers allege that the NFL misled athletes about the dangers of repeated concussions, thereby committing fraud and voiding any chance for these questions to be folded into collective bargaining.

The NFL vehemently denies that it misled any players.

Plaintiffs' lawyers also say that many of their clients played before the first collective bargaining agreement was reached in 1968, or from 1987-1993, when there was no CBA.

"It's a great sport," Yepremian said. "I just wish we'd had better supervision."