NCAA Footballers With Head Injuries Look to Buck Settlement Trend

Brain-injured football players who played for dozens of universities over several decades want jury verdicts, not settlements, in their lawsuits saying the NCAA didn’t protect them from chronic brain diseases.

Despite recent high-profile settlements, injured athletes still haven’t gotten a definitive ruling on a question central to all concussion litigation—whether playing a sport causes later-life brain diseases. Their lawyers believe that jury trials could answer that question, and that they might result in monetary damages exceeding what players could get from negotiated settlements.

“We still haven’t had a jury verdict on sports-related CTE injuries and neither insurers nor litigators know ...