Bo Jackson’s bionic hip
Jul 2, 2007 Injury bug, Legal stuff, Old dudes
It is not by accident that I don’t waste words on “big” stories like Pacman/Vick/Tank, the demise of NFL Europa, and the like. I figure that any story of that size or importance is going to be covered to death by every other outlet, so what the hell could I possibly add? Besides, we at DGDB&D aspire to be Texans-centric and these stories would require much thinking and writing about non-Texans football. Blech.
In that vein, I was going to ignore the whole “former players wanting better compensation after football” thing. Then I saw where former Texans o-lineman Ben Lynch filed suit against the NFL’s retirement and disability plan.
[Lynch's attorney] alleges in the federal court suit that Lynch was improperly denied full disability benefits because plan administrators claimed his disabilities were not the result of an “active” football injury.
The suit says Lynch, 34, suffered an “on-the-field injury” that ended his career. It said his knee was seriously hurt in a 2003 preseason game, that he had a staph infection during his recovery and that he now suffers “crippling pain in his leg, lower back and neck.”
Assuming that the allegations here are true, one has to think that Lynch has a pretty strong case. I mean, I’m not a doctor (shocking, I know), but staph infections would seem to be relatively common post-surgery issues. It’s not like he’s claiming that his busted knee caused him to get hit by a truck1–he’s saying that he hurt his knee in a game and that led directly to his inability to work now. In response, if we are again to believe the allegation, the NFL disability people said that the infection that stemmed directly from the surgery to repair his injured knee did not qualify as an “active” injury.2
Whatever. At best, the league is playing a semantic game. You get your leg torn off mid-play? That counts. You have to get your leg amputated a year from now because of a freak thigh injury? Not so much.
I have no idea what the long-term implications of this case will be, if any, so I’ll stop talking about it now.
1 Here is where I would get into a discussion of proximate cause and the like if I didn’t HATE legal discussion.
2 Causation/intervening cause (kinda) discussion would go here. My head hurts.
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July 2nd, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Ben Lynch = who?
On topic, man is the NFL screwing some of it’s people on these deals. I wonders what the NFLPA’s take on this would be.
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July 2nd, 2007 at 5:36 pm
The same impotent NFLPA that can’t get guaranteed contracts for its players?
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July 4th, 2007 at 8:46 am
I’m all for disagreement and discourse in the comments. Hell, that’s half the fun of this thing. But when someone who can’t spell to save his life and obviously has zero grasp of legal liability makes the same asinine argument three times (without addressing the liability aspect at all, other than to say “nope… not the team’s fault”), I’m not too fond.
Also, just so we are clear on my hypocrisy, I am allowed to be as insulting as I want on here. Other people only get to be as insulting as I allow them to be. (Except Shake… I’ll pretty much give him carte blanche.)