On July 2, 2018, in a joint motion, both parties in the NCAA $75 million concussion settlement asked the court to, once again, push back a final hearing in the $75 million settlement. The parties asked the court to push back the hearing for the same reasons that settlement has been delayed over the past several months, not all of the possible class members have been provided proper notice regarding the settlement. If the judge grants the motion, it will be the sixth time that this settlement has been delayed.
As we have previously reported, in November 2017, U.S. District Judge John Lee first delayed final approval of the settlement, and stipulated an order allowing class members to object or opt out of the settlement by January 16, 2018. Judge Lee anticipated that the court administrator would file a revised declaration of completion by January 30, 2018; however, the court administrator notified another group of class members, who had yet to be notified of the case, the night before the deadline. In February 2018, Judge Lee again delayed final approval after class members still had not yet learned about the case and its proposed settlement. On March 8, 2018, Judge Lee asked both parties, “I take it I will not see any more motions like this?”
However, Judge Lee is seeing “another motion like this” as both parties admit that all possible class members have yet to be contacted. For the most part, the parties blamed the notice administrator, Gilardi & Co., LLC. According to the motion, repeated errors by Gilardi & Co. “have caused the final approval hearing to be delayed three times.” Due to the errors, both parties requested and recommend that a third-party auditor conduct an independent audit of Gilardi & Co.’s audit and that Gilardi & Co. bear the cost of the third-party audit.