[troutman]

The Lawyer Who Took on the NFL Over Concussions Has a New Strategy That Could Devastate the NCAA

Jason Luckasevic was the first lawyer to sue the NFL over head injuries, leading to a massive class-action settlement he describes as a "debacle." Now he's taking on the NCAA "case by case by case" in courts across the country.

https://www.si.com/college/2020/10/1...es-daily-cover

In truth, the NFL has been little more than inconvenienced. Estimates put the league’s payout from the April 2016 settlement at $1 billion over 65 years, more than manageable for a business that generated $16 billion in revenue in 2018 alone. So far, only 5% of the more than 20,000 eligible former players have been paid, due to the Escherian legal and medical gantlet each must navigate to receive money. Luckasevic refers to the settlement as a “quagmire debacle.”

In the NCAA, though, he sees a second chance. Luckasevic believes that, when the NFL suit became a class action, big-time lawyers came in and served themselves more than the former players. Now he’s trying a different strategy, taking on the NCAA in a string of individual brain-injury cases filed in state courts. Onyshko’s was the first of eight suits that Luckasevic and his partners have brought against the NCAA in four states. Five others are being prepared, the lawyer says, with more to come once the court backlog caused by the pandemic eases. “We’re gonna take [the NCAA] on case by case by case,” he says.

The gambit is risky, according to legal experts: The lawsuits will be expensive, time-consuming and as difficult to win as a road game in Tuscaloosa. Luckasevic and his colleagues must persuade jurors that the NCAA should have known playing football could lead to long-term brain disease well before all the research and attention over the last 15 years.

But those legal experts also say this: With the right jury, the cases can be won. And if Luckasevic pulls off even a single victory, the ripple effects could threaten not just the NCAA’s finances, but also its very operational model. Especially at a time when the organization—beset by a revenue-depleting pandemic, congressional scrutiny, and pushes from conferences, schools and athletes for greater power—has never been more vulnerable.

Gabe Feldman, the director of the Tulane Law School sports law program, puts it this way: “These can be incredibly dangerous cases for the NCAA.”