Seven more players from non-contact sports such as golf, baseball, and volleyball are expected to be added as named plaintiffs in the NCAA concussion lawsuit which is in the middle of a settlement approval process by U.S. District Judge John Lee. The NCAA and the players reached a preliminary settlement in July that would establish a $75 million fund for concussion related research as well as for diagnosis of current and former players for brain.
At a preliminary approval hearing in October, Judge Lee asked to include more athletes from non-contract sports as class members and to analyze how the fund would be affected by the inclusion. The report filed on Monday concluded that
“[w]hile the costs are certainly somewhat higher with the inclusion of non-contact sports, there are nonetheless sufficient funds to provide benefits to the additional athletes under the various scenarios”
The report considered four non-contact sports—gymnastics, pole-vaulting, softball, and baseball—in its models and accounted for that “[n]on-contact sports do not in general expose participants to the requisite pattern of repeated head trauma.” For example, it assumed the risk for former gymnasts to show symptoms of cognitive impairment to be at 1.5 times more than the general population while college football players were put at 3 times in the plaintiffs’ previous report.
Judge Lee has scheduled another hearing on Friday.