The widow of a former San Diego Charger is among the first wave of litigants filing wrongful death lawsuits against NCW football. Jeffrey Staggs played for San Diego State University before becoming an NFL linebacker in the 1960s and early 70s when he died in 2014. An autopsy found he had been living with CTE traumatic brain injury. The lawsuits claim the NCAA didn't do enough to warn players of the risks of head trauma and didn't do enough to try to protect players from concussion. Joining me by Skype is L.A. Times reporter Brady McCullough and Brady welcome to the show. Thanks Maureen. Good to be here. Tell us what the stag's family is alleging in this lawsuit. You know this lawsuit is actually you know as you mentioned it's a part of a wave of lawsuits of this nature that are basically negligence slash wrongful death lawsuits that are going to be filed against the NCAA and some of these suits will also end up not these particular ones that will be end up being filed against conferences and universities in certain cases. And what really all of them have a lot of the same language. If you looked at the one for Jeffrey Staggs and the ones that were filed for a couple of other former college football players this week. They're all basically using the same language in the same information to to state their case which is that the NCAA as the governing body of college football college athletics has the knowledge as early as 1933 that concussions were a problem for football players and that knowledge is being built and increased over the many decades. To a point that even when Staggs was playing at San Diego State in the mid to late 60s. There had been enough knowledge acquired from the and that the case will show in the files that the NCAA has own literature and such. At that point about sports medicine was already acknowledging the effects of concussions and how to properly assess them. But the NCAA that time did not put in protocols in place for all universities to handle concussions and to have a framework for diagnosis and treatment of them. It goes on to say that at San Diego State like pretty much every other college football program at that point players were not really encouraged to stop playing when they quote unquote had their bell rung. BRADY As you mentioned Sarah Staggs is just one of the family members of former players who are now involved in as you say sort of a wave of lawsuits wrongful death lawsuits against the NCAA. Why now. Well that's a really good point. I think the NCAA for a lot of different types of cases has opened itself up legally. The first of these wrongful death cases was this summer in Texas a former University of Texas Longhorn the widow of that player sued the NCAA with the same type of language in a case down in Texas and the NCAA ended up settling that case which was a bit of a surprise because it sets a precedent that the NCAA doesn't want to go to trial in these cases. And as I pointed out in my story the goal of these this latest wave is they actually do want to get to trial. Why are they selling the NCAA and not the individual schools where these men played. Is the NCAA responsible for setting safety standards across the board. Yeah you know one thing that I think the public doesn't really think about is the NCAA is the schools. You know it's a collection the governing body of the NCAA is a collection of university presidents. So it is the schools and in this way I think the answer is complicated of that if I tried to really talk with the attorneys about that and get get a read on that. But I think in a lot of cases it's a lot harder to sue a state State University because of different things that a layman of a law like myself wouldn't really know how to understand. Whereas I think suing the NCAA which I think also has you know I think has more money available for settlements and things like that. But I think it's easier to have to sue the NCAA in these matters than I think a state institution or are different institutions. One thing as you mentioned these wrongful death lawsuits are asking for is a jury trial. Can you explain why that's so important to these litigants. Yeah they really wants the stage of a trial I think to put the NCAA and this issue to the forefront and they don't want to be quieted from a PR standpoint by a settlement. I think that one thing that was interesting was that with her being the first trial of this nature with the widow of Greg clutz being in Texas the attorney I spoke with who's doing these current filings said that he was you know he thought that they couldn't have had a better place to have picked the jury for a trial if he were the NCAA which you know being in Texas where football is king you know and you would have theoretically jury members who really wouldn't want anything that you know to happen to the beloved game of football and that they settled even in Texas would tell you that and in more liberal areas of the country like three of these filings are in the state of California. You know I think that would be you'd have a much harder time picking a jury in California that would be sort of blinded by their love of the sport of football. I've been speaking with L.A. Times reporter Brady McCullough and Brady thank you. Thank you.
The widow of a former San Diego State University football player is among the first wave of litigants who have filed wrongful death lawsuits against the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Jeffrey Staggs played for SDSU before becoming a San Diego Charger linebacker in the 1960’s. When he died in 2014, an autopsy found he had been living with a degenerative brain disease known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE.
The lawsuits claim the NCAA didn’t do enough to warn players of the risks of head trauma and didn’t do enough to try to protect players from concussion.
J. Brady McCollough, who covers college football for the Los Angeles Times, discusses the latest head injury lawsuits Wednesday on Midday Edition.
