Football Concussion Lawsuits Start To Hit High Schools 233
HughPickens.com writes Michael Tarm reports that a former high school quarterback has filed a lawsuit against the Illinois High School Association saying it didn't do enough to protect him from concussions when he played and still doesn't do enough to protect current players. This is the first instance in which legal action has been taken for former high school players as a whole against a group responsible for prep sports in a state. Such litigation could snowball, as similar suits targeting associations in other states are planned. "In Illinois high school football, responsibility — and, ultimately, fault — for the historically poor management of concussions begins with the IHSA," the lawsuit states. It calls high school concussions "an epidemic" and says the "most important battle being waged on high school football fields ... is the battle for the health and lives of" young players. The lawsuit calls on the Bloomington-based IHSA to tighten its head-injury protocols. It doesn't seek damages. "This is not a threat or attack on football," says attorney Joseph Siprut, who reached a $75 million settlement in a similar lawsuit against the NCAA in 2011. "Football is in danger in Illinois and other states — especially at the high school level — because of how dangerous it is. If football does not change internally, it will die. The talent well will dry up as parents keep kids out of the sport— and that's how a sport dies."
Previous research has shown that far from innocuous, invisible injuries, concussions confer tremendous brain damage. Individuals with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) may show symptoms of dementia, such as memory loss, aggression, confusion and depression, which generally appear years or many decades after the trauma. "The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine is gone," says Chris Nowinski. "We know we can't do that anymore. This causes long-term damage."
Public healthcare and balanced risk. (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Fully socialised healthcare and comprehensive welfare state like all the most advanced countries in the world do it, then there'd be no need to have this sort of inefficient, risk-avoisive bullshit just because people fear being fucked for life over a moderate injury;
2. Acknowledgment then that lottery-win money is a ridiculous way to compensate anyone for an injury sustained while doing something risky. It fucks things over for everyone.
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3. At the high school level, the players are minors.
Re:Public healthcare and balanced risk. (Score:5, Insightful)
Tort System (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Fully socialised healthcare and comprehensive welfare state like all the most advanced countries in the world do it, then there'd be no need to have this sort of inefficient, risk-avoisive bullshit just because people fear being fucked for life over a moderate injury;
Wrong.
The purpose of the tort system is to incentivize people to act reasonably. It has big costs--a bunch of jerks trying to get money--but that's what it's all about.
Socialized healthcare takes care of the cost to the individual who is harmed--it does not incentivize the high school to act reasonably.
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how about it be required for the high school to act reasonably by law and if not then put the suckers responsible for the actual action resulting in risk out of job. simple, eh? the tort system, takes just money out of the big pool, like maths and everything, and doesn't fire the people making the choices to run the kids head to head on a field.
Re:Tort System (Score:5, Insightful)
Academics inferior to sports for admission (Score:2, Insightful)
A little dose of reality: Colleges do FAR more to recruit and court sports talent than academic talent.
My niece has some talent with soccer and decent grades. She was offered full rides at a lot of schools (tuition and living expense). She was offered special dorms, special tutoring, super nice facilities reserved for sports people. The coaches flew her out to their schools for sales pitches and gave her the red-carpet treatment, expensive dinners, etc.
Me with my paltry top-1/2 percent test scores, strai
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Re:Tort System (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm afraid not. Your counter-argument "no one is required to play football," unfortunately, falls short of negating my argument. Here is my argument: unfair deals are unfair. Football, as an institution, is unfair to the players, regardless of no requirement to play. A student injured in HS in a football game may very well have that injury, pain and suffering, for the rest of their lives... might be the first thing they're aware of every day they wake... 35 years on... the old injury is what wakes them up. With pain. But lets go ahead and say that doesn't matter because they weren't required to play. Students have been killed on the field. But its their fault, they weren't required to play?
Except that's not how logic, morality, law and fairness works. Continue to be obtuse if you wish, but you're not persuading anyone with stupidity.
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Well how about having the person act responsibly? No one forced any of the kids to play football
OK, so any high school kid over 18 should be free to play football.
Re:Tort System (Score:5, Informative)
Because they are minors and their coaches are presented as experts. That convinces both the kids and parents all is well when it is not. The entire school is seemingly geared to guide minors into school sports.
Beyond that, this is a case where the 'product' is 'used' correctly and causes severe injuries anyway. Your saw scenario is a case of using the product incorrectly. If you're using the saw correctly and the blade pops off and cuts your leg off, it is a fairly clear liability for the manufacturer that got the bolts from the Happee Bolt Company and did no QC.
And note that the suit in TFA demands only reforms to reduce concussion injury, not money.
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Ummm -- do you have even the faintest glimmer of a clue as to the consequences of repetitive concussions?
Why, yes, that was a rhetorical question.
Re:Public healthcare and balanced risk. (Score:5, Interesting)
The room and board kinda sucks too.
Helmets with Sensors (Score:5, Interesting)
I know it's being tried at some colleges and high schools, but it would not surprise me if mandatory sensors that communicate to central monitoring station at games and practices are required in the future.
I'd imagine that a threshold of G's and number of times during play time or practice will require the player to sit out for a period of time or for the game/practice.
Only a matter of time.
Re:Helmets with Sensors (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of what helped the problem fly under the radar so long (despite the fact that descriptions of boxers being 'punch drunk' are available even from classical sources) was the almost complete lack of measurements. Unless it cracked the helmet or something, the only severity measure was the (probably unrecorded) subjective assessment by the victim and any bystanders, and there wasn't anyone standing around delivering cognitive function tests before and after, or anyone doing long term followup of various populations with different levels of impact exposure.
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Re:Helmets with Sensors (Score:4, Insightful)
How about poay a psort that doesn't require heavy physical contact?
nearly all athletics events, swimming, baseball, basketball,as well as numerous other field games exist that manage to be entertaining without having to put players at huge physical risk like (American) football does. Same deal with rugby and league, but even those games have rules that avoid the worst of the heavy impacts - and lack of body armor in those sports means the players are required to play more within limits that will tend to have less impact on the brain.
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I know it's being tried at some colleges and high schools, but it would not surprise me if mandatory sensors that communicate to central monitoring station at games and practices are required in the future.
Sensors can be, and will be, disabled if the players think it's in their short-term self-interest to do so.
Just see how the workers at Fukushima [washingtonsblog.com] did that themselves with the tacit endorsement of management.
A far simpler and more effective solution would be to have high school players just play flag football.
Flag football is a version of American football or Canadian football where the basic rules of the game are similar to those of the mainstream game (often called "tackle football" for contrast), but instead of tackling players to the ground, the defensive team must remove a flag or flag belt from the ball carrier ("deflagging") to end a down.
That would get rid of 90% of serious injuries at least.
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Take the motion sensor from a iPhone and put it in the helmet next to a WiFi chip.... that's the solution they're using in the NFL.
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You're misunderstanding the premise. It's not that the helmet would be scanning the player's head for injuries, its that it would be active during the game and would have sensors that say "You know what - I just detected a blow of significant force on this side of the helmet - that's probably enough to give the player a concussion.".
That said - I just don't see this happening from a financial perspective. Most high school football team budgets are probably less than ONE of these helmets would cost. They'
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http://www.shockwatch.com/moni... [shockwatch.com]
Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Concussions are caused by sudden forces applied to the brain, right?
Well then, let's get rid of the helmets. No, really. It's not like there's hard game pieces flying towards your head at 90+ MPH (hockey, baseball, lacrosse). The only long-term damage that a helmet can protect against is skull fractures. Other than that, they reduce the pain associated with hitting your head, making it easier to damage your brain.
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It will reduce concussions, but greatly increase more threatening problems.
The simplest and easiest solution is just to add rules that protect the head.
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My high school gym class had some memorable flag football games... the girls proved they could understand the strategies of football, and the willingness to take some fairly-played hits. It was more fun that keeping track of the official boys team.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
And we should give it a different name so people don't get confused.
I vote for "rugby".
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I have a strong preference for the round-ball game but it's only fair to point out that the term 'football' originally denoted any ball game played on foot, as opposed to games played on horseback of which there were many but only polo survives in a popular form. Meanwhile back in English public schools the chaps couldn't be bothered saying 'Association Football' so they abbreviated the name of the game to 'soc'. When one of the more versatile chaps was asked if he was going to play 'Rugger' this year he re
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Football has a strong connection to military training. It is the best sport to teach future cannon fodder to blindly obey the rules while working as a team and follow the chain of command.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
The boxing glove did much the same thing. The human head is several pounds of thick bone, and the human hand is basically chicken drumsticks; a bare-knuckle boxer couldn't hit a man in the head very hard without breaking his fingers. The object was to hit the supraorbital ridges, opening cuts. The plentiful blood flow in the head assured that the opponent would be blinded by blood, and the fight was over. It also left him looking like the second-place winner in a knife fight, and public revulsion caused boxing bans in many jurisdictions.
The industry headed that off by inventing the boxing glove, which cut down on the lacerations. It also hardened the fist enough that a powerful man can deliver a maximum-effort blow. Result: boxing changed from a face-rearranging sport to a brain-damaging sport.
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He's regenerating CNS tissue? How does that work in animal spinal models?
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Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
There is nothing resembling professional football that I would like to see a human being playing without a helmet.
Not a rugby fan, then.
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He said human.
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I'd rather see pro football remain as it is, but also see all school sponsorship of the sport ended. Let the adults who want to make a profession of the game go into it with their eyes wide open, not indoctrinated as impressionable young people. If the sport dies from lack of participation, so b
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Other sports manage to find solutions to this without helmets. Think wrestling, water polo.
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Or Rugby Union, Rugby League, AFL. All are full contact sports without the armour that is worn in American Football.
But the styles of the games are completely different. From an uninterested observer American Football seems to have a lot of two lines of armoured tanks crashing into each other in the hope that the line gets broken. It doesn't seem to matter as much who has the ball. In all of types of rugby attacking a player who doesn't have the ball is a foul and that includes taking out defenders or a
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From what? What's colliding with player's skulls with such force they're going to get fractured?
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And they almost killed it, except Roosevelt made a speech saying that the continued existence of football was critical to the future of the USA.
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That's going to be tricky to wiggle out of... (Score:3)
Mitigating shocks with helmets that don't make you look like you've been engulfed by a marshmallow python just isn't an easy problem; and there isn't an obvious 'floor' value below which shocks(especially when repeated, often, and often in relatively quick succession) are entirely harmless. Even if you can push the 'eh, they knew the risks and chose to play' at the pro level, that isn't going to go so well with children, who are typically treated as unsuitable for contract-grade decision making.
Re:That's going to be tricky to wiggle out of... (Score:4, Funny)
Simple fix: Play football with the feet. There are countries where they do this.
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While soccer (football to the rest of the world) probably has less of a problem, it is still a potentially serious issue [nytimes.com]. Better suggest golf next time. Or Dungeon and Dragons.
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While soccer (football to the rest of the world) probably has less of a problem, it is still a potentially serious issue. Better suggest golf next time. Or Dungeon and Dragons.
You've obviously never seen me try to golf then. The only safe place is the middle of the fairway.
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If you're not experiencing brain damage from excessive *headdesk* in D&D, your players are doing something horribly wrong.
Or horribly right. Hard to tell in most games.
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I'd imagine this problem has been getting worse as they've tweaked the rules to make headers easier and much more common. When the ball weighted 75kg of wet leather and had massive prominent stitches runing across it, heading was somewhat less common.
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Haha. I stayed at a hotel with a golf course once (I don't play golf) and every guest had to acknowledge in writing that walking outside when golfers are present is inherently dangerous and that the hotel is not liable if you're hit by a ball.
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The problem then is that your supporters riot. I think they don't get enough of a fix of things happening on the pitch so they beat the crap out of each other afterwards.
About fucking time (Score:5, Insightful)
Those brain cells are gone for good -- and we're talking about minors who are acting under the care of an adult in authority.
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Exactly this.
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Yep... kids who don't want to play football tend to be suicidal and homicidal on the field... parents should take the blame for that happening.
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Yep... parents dream of their kid sending home NFL-level money... but the truth is there's very few new players admitted into the league each season, and the players leaving the league often don't have enough money to retire.
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We'll see (Score:2)
who wins - common sense or big money.
Are they still separate? One wonders....
Let it die. (Score:5, Insightful)
> If football does not change internally, it will die.
Good.
Then schools and colleges can get back to academic disciplines.
If people want group sports, go to the local sports center and sign up.
Sports fuck up the priorities of schools and colleges to their detriment.
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Yes, you can say that the adult athletes should know about the dangers and as such should be in a position to ascertain the risk. Fundamentally, it was one of denial that something will happen to him. The same argument could be made that the Jews knew about the risks when Hitler got elected and opted to move to Birobidzhan as soon as the Nazi move
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Well it was. Where I went to college, sports was not considered the business of the university. But that was a long time ago in a country far, far away. No tuition fees either.
Value your prefrontal cortex? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then don't play football.
Avoidable brain damage is stupid. Avoidable mechanical brain damage twice so.
Re:Value your prefrontal cortex? (Score:4, Insightful)
But the problem is that just like the NFL, these high school and college football programs are hiding these head injury risks from the players. It's not the kids' fault that the adults they should be able to trust are putting them into risky situations without properly informing them of the risks.
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But the problem is that just like the NFL, these high school and college football programs are hiding these head injury risks from the players. It's not the kids' fault that the adults they should be able to trust are putting them into risky situations without properly informing them of the risks.
That's not a solution. Minors can't give informed consent. They are not adults, and the presumption is that, lacking enough real-word experience, they are more subject to peer pressure, etc., and less capable of understanding what "life-long brain damage" really means. Kids think they're invulnerable, that it won't happen to them (a lot of adults also think the same wrt addiction, risky driving habits, etc).
And the schools don't dare inform parents of all the risks - parents would say "What, are you cr
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I wish you were right, but experience with the parents of brain-damaged young athletes indicates otherwise.
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And the schools don't dare inform parents of all the risks - parents would say "What, are you crazy? I'm going to risk my kids future so you can get a stupid trophy for your office? DIAF."
I wish you were right, but experience with the parents of brain-damaged young athletes indicates otherwise.
Maybe it's time to consider that they're engaged in willful child endangerment? Nobody, not even a concussed-out coach, wants to be labeled a child abuser.
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And the schools don't dare inform parents of all the risks - parents would say "What, are you crazy? I'm going to risk my kids future so you can get a stupid trophy for your office? DIAF."
I wish you were right, but experience with the parents of brain-damaged young athletes indicates otherwise.
Maybe it's time to consider that they're engaged in willful child endangerment? Nobody, not even a concussed-out coach, wants to be labeled a child abuser.
Maybe so, but it's clear from what happened at Penn State that they just don't want the label. There's way too much tendency to turn a blind eye.
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I didn't posit any "solution". All I said is the risk are being hidden from the players. And since these are kids they simply trust the adults telling them to play since it's supposedly ok.
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Do you like the capabilities your pre-frontal cortex gives you, like executive functions, impulse control, etc?
Then don't play football.
Avoidable brain damage is stupid. Avoidable mechanical brain damage twice so.
But...but...where will we get future cops and politicians from, if there are no more government-indoctrinated violent and aggressive brain-damaged.individuals being turned out by schools?
Strat
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But...but...where will we get future cops and politicians from, if there are no more government-indoctrinated violent and aggressive brain-damaged.individuals being turned out by schools?
The kids who were given the choice of jail or the marines are a likely source.
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Perhaps. But: you are going to die. Almost anything you might do prior to that is going to leave its mark on your body, as will doing nothing, and that includes your brain. Does this mean football is a good deal? Maybe, maybe not, but you'll have to actually think it through before you can rightfully judge it. Because even if you do end up with brain damage, that doesn't mean all the good times you had from the game - or the money
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Many of the brain injured football players end up broke and alone, possibly in jail. By that point, if they COULD think clearly, they'd probably wish they'd played a different sport or at least taken better precautions.
Football wasn't always played in full body armor.Perhaps it's time to redesign based on a scientific understanding of the risks and how to mitigate them.
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It's actually very simple. The brain is soft. The skull is hard. When the two collide due to the head experiencing too much acceleration, it's easy to guess which of the two will be damaged more.
The are dozens of types of sport that don't involve the participants head and neck experiencing large forces as a normal part of the game.
let it die (Score:2)
Let it die. The trend for every decade I've been alive is that more brains are needed to survive in the workplace, not less. Not only are the jobs more skilled, there are more rules to follow--- you have to have the mental wherewithal to know when you can and cannot say "fucked her right in the pussy", to use one famous example. We don't need otherwise healthy people starting at a deficit because they pla
If I was running a school system ... (Score:5, Insightful)
All downside. No upside.
Re: If I was running a school system ... (Score:2)
Absolutely. I live in Texas and my school district just sold a bond to build a 58million dollar stadium. It is amazing and stupid.
If I was running a school system ... (Score:2)
And you'd be ran out of town.
In many places in small town america, high school sports (especially football and basketball) are a big entertainment draw. In my hometown of 6,000, it was not unusual to see over 1,000 people at a football game.
I hate to say it, but most people are more interested in winning the state championship than in leading the state in graduation rates.
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You mean like election engineering? That does seem to be right up there with football, and remarkably (given that it happens at the same time of year) the two don't seem to be exclusive.
As long as the school budget cuts don't impact the sports program, it's all good. Keeps the kids from getting funny ideas.
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I think we should get rid of all sports in fact. Probably the arts, and likely music too. What does physical education really add to education any way? Home ec, for sure. Likely shop, those kids should go to vocational training for that.
Great plan. Really. I'd love to meet the products of that system, not sterile at all!
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I think we should get rid of all sports in fact. Probably the arts, and likely music too. What does physical education really add to education any way? Home ec, for sure. Likely shop, those kids should go to vocational training for that.
Hmm... somewhat of a non sequitur, don't ya think? The parent was talking about a sport that is known to cause permanent brain damage in minors. I'm not sure if I agree with parent's approach to that issue, but it's a legitimate concern.
How exactly do ALL other sports, the arts, music, home ec, etc. cause serious and permanent injuries to teenagers? Unless you can answer that question, I think your analogy is invalid.
There are plenty of reasons to argue for all sorts of activities, including many var
Bad Helmet Design (Score:3)
Re:Bad Helmet Design (Score:4, Interesting)
Why does the helmet only have padding on the inside?
Most football concussions now come from "rotational acceleration", the twisting of the brain inside the skull. It is much harder for a helmet to protect against there than "linear acceleration" forces, the helmet has to literally slide around the head.
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Football isn't going to die (Score:3, Insightful)
As we get ever more data about the danger of even mild concussions, it's pretty obvious Football is never going to be "safe". It's a sport focused on big, meaty impacts between dozens of large men running at each other full tilt. But the idea Football is going to die is laughable. We've know boxing was destroying young men's minds since the 1920s, and it's still alive and....punching. There will always be someone desperate and poor enough to want to "fight their way out of poverty".
But football as the sport of the everyman is probably over. The team captain who bullies all the nerds in 2020 will be captain of the school basketball team or something. Hell, maybe not suffering cranial trauma every week for years on end will mean these jocks won't even be dumb!
repeated concussions are far more damaging (Score:5, Insightful)
The Model (Score:2)
Re:When did jocks become such pussies? (Score:5, Funny)
Soccer and other helmetless football codes (Score:2)
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Let me guess - you played a LOT of football without a helmet?
In Australia all codes of football are played sans helmet.
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Australian Rules is not the only code of football played in Australia - hence the plural above.
Rugby forwards are not the same as Australian Rules forwards, and are unlikely to do rag doll impersonations.
Obviously they aren't usually as big as NFL linemen since they have to full 80 minutes in a game without the constant breaks in play of American Football and hence can't ignore endurance when building strength, they don't have to be tiny though: http://www.rugby.com.au/wallab... [rugby.com.au]
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Couldn't even be bothered to finish the summary?
The lawsuit calls on the Bloomington-based IHSA to tighten its head-injury protocols. It doesn't seek damages.
How exactly is the lawyer going to make money from a suit that doesn't seek damages?
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I expect he'll find a way.
Damages anyway (Score:2)
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The lawsuit calls on the Bloomington-based IHSA to tighten its head-injury protocols. It doesn't seek damages.
A lawsuit seeking no damages is clearly the ultimate path to cashing in.
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What I quoted was straight from the article.