Page 1
Court of Appeal:
NCAA Not Liable for Death of Player From Head Trauma
Stratton Says Linebacker for USC Assumed Risks Inherent in Sport, Rejecting Widow’s Contention That Danger of Contracting a Particular Disease Resulting From Repeated Head Hits Was Not Undertaken
By a MetNews Staff Writer
|
|
|
—USC Pictured is Matthew Gee, who died Dec. 31, 2018, at the age of 49. He suffered from a brain condition apparently caused by repeated hits to his head while playing football for USC, including participation in two Rose Bowl Games. The Court of Appeal for this district has held that the National Collegiate Athletic Association is not liable to his widow for wrongful death based on its failure to put measures in place to reduce head impacts. |
|
|
A man who played football for USC from 1988-92 and, like four of the other linebackers during that period, died before reaching the age of 50 in part because of head trauma, assumed the risks inherent in the sport, Div. Eight of the Court of Appeal for this district has held, declaring that his widow has no viable cause of action for wrongful death against the organization that regulates college athletics programs based on an alleged failure to protect.
Presiding Justice Maria E. Stratton authored the unpublished opinion, filed Tuesday, affirming a judgment, pursuant to a jury verdict, in an action by Alana Gee, widow of Matthew Gee, against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”). Then-Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Terry Green, now a mediator/arbitrator, presided at the trial.
An autopsy revealed that Matthew Gee, who died at age 49, had incurred chronic traumatic encephalopathy (“CTE”). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that CTE is “a progressive neurodegenerative disease caused in part by repetitive head trauma” and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has come to a like conclusion.
NCAA has denied the existence of the condition.
Widow’s Contention
Alana Gee contended on appeal, as she did in the trial court, that her husband had not specifically assumed a risk of contracting CTE and, therefore, the NCAA’s defense did not apply.
Green ruled:
“[A] pathological definition of the risk to be assumed makes little sense....The risk athletes assume is the risk of a physical event; the precise nature of the subsequent pathological consequences is not something that can or need be predicted....
“It cannot reasonably be disputed that blows to the head are an inherent risk of college football.”
That, Stratton said in her opinion, “is a correct statement of the law.”
She wrote:
“All college football players receive numerous head hits, but apparently not all develop CTE. A formal diagnosis is not possible until the player’s brain can be examined after death. When Matthew Gee played, the NCAA did not know and could not have known which specific college football players had received sufficient hits to cause CTE, or when that threshold was reached. In Matthew Gee’s case, most, if not all, of the symptoms associated with CTE did not develop until after he stopped playing.”
Prevention of Harm
Stratton agreed with Alana Gee’s proposition that NCAA had a duty not to increase the risks inherent in football, but rejected her theory that the defendant breached that duty by failing to require reasonable measures on the part of teams to reduce the number of head impacts. In her opening brief, the appellant argued:
“An average college football player—and Matt was, in every way, an above-average player—takes about 4,000-6,000 hits to the head over a college career. A large portion of these hits, however, are not a necessary component of the sport, and there were reasonable steps the NCAA could have taken to significantly reduce the number of head impacts received by college football players like Matt.”
She set forth various examples of steps the NCAA could have taken to reduce dangers, one of which was barring or cutting down on practice sessions, saying:
“[T]he NCAA controls the timing and number of college football practices that teams are allowed to conduct and whether those practices can include contact drills. Because the majority of college football head impacts occur during practices, eliminating or reducing the number of full-contact practices would have significantly decreased the number of head impacts Matt sustained during his college career with little or no effect on the sport. Nevertheless, the NCAA failed to take this and other reasonable measures to reduce the number of head impacts sustained by college football players.”
Stratton responded:
“But from 1988 to 1992, there is no evidence in the record that the NCAA knew that reducing full-contact practices would have led to a reduction in players contracting CTE.” So far as taking steps to minimize head hits on the field, she said:
“[R]repeated head hits cannot be minimized without changing the game of college football. Nothing precludes the NCAA from changing the game of college football to eliminate the inherent risk of head hits. The assumption of the risk doctrine precludes us from doing so.”
Stratton said that the purpose of the doctrine of assumption of the risk, as applied to a player, “is to protect the continued vitality of the sport.”
She made note that of the five linebackers who were contemporaries of Gee and died early, “[t]he most famous” of them “was Junior Seau, who played professional football for many years after graduating from USC and who committed suicide in 2012.” It was determined after his death that Seau suffered from CTE.
In 2016, the NCAA settled a class-action in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in which it agreed to pay $70 million to go into a fund for monitoring past ad current athletes for brain trauma, with another $5 million earmarked for research on concussions.
Of the hundreds of lawsuits been filed against the NCAA by athletes or their survivors over head traumas, Alana Gee’s is only the second to go to trial.
The case is Gee v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, B327691.
Copyright 2024, Metropolitan News Company