Former NHL Players Allege Brain Injuries from Concussions

Ten former National Hockey League (NHL) players filed a class action lawsuit in Washington, D.C. on Friday, alleging that the NHL failed to adequately warn and protect its players from sport-related concussions.

Links between brain injuries and participation in certain sports.

The plaintiffs include Gary Leeman, Bradley Aitkne, Darren Banks, Curt Bennett, Richard Dunn, Robert Manno, Blair James Stewart, Morris Titanic and Richard Vaive, who held various positions for teams including the New York Rangers and the Los Angeles Kings between 1970 and 1996. The plaintiffs allege that concussions they incurred during hockey games or practice caused depression, memory loss, headaches, hearing loss, eye problems, and sleep disorders.

According to the complaint, the NHL took little action to protect its players from harm. Instead, the league changed its rules to make the game faster in 2004, continues to implement “enforcers,” whose job it is to fight, and refuses to bar body-checking or bare-knuckle fighting despite evidence that this has led to higher rates of concussions.

“Beginning in the 1920s, respective, peer-reviewed publications have chronicled the ever-increasing links that doctors and scientists have made between brain injuries and participation in certain sports, including hockey,” according to the complaint.

The NHL knew about the serious risks of concussions as early as the 1990s, the plaintiffs said. However, despite forming its “Concussion Program” to study the issue in 1997, the league failed to take any preventative action until at least 2011 when it finally released a statement on the issue.

The NHL class action follows a $765 million settlement reached by the National Football League (NFL) in August 2013, where thousands of former players alleged that the league did not properly address long-term effects of head injuries.