All states allow athletes to be awarded workers’ compensation benefits for injuries sustained during their playing days. However, California has emerged as a favorite jurisdiction for two reasons. First, California is one of the few states that allow athletes to claim injuries for the cumulative effect of injuries over time, or what some jurisdictions would call either an “occupational disease” or “cumulative injury.” Second, California has extremely lax personal jurisdiction requirements.
Ordinarily, a claimant in a workers’ compensation claim would need to establish residency or some other significant contacts with the state in which they are claiming benefits. However, judges in California have taken what could charitably be called an expanded view of the significant contacts question. Terrell Davis, who played his entire 88 game NFL career with the Denver Broncos, played all of nine games within the state of California, yet Davis filed for benefits in California, and recently received a $199,000 injury settlement.
Davis is hardly an isolated example; since the early 1980’s, California’s workers compensation system has paid out $747 million dollars to some 4,500 athletes. Most of this money has been paid to athletes taking advantage of the lax jurisdictional requirements and the ability to claim for an occupational disease or cumulative injury, and not just a single traumatic injury.
Since workers’ compensation is an employer-funded program, the battle lines are not drawn between taxpayers and athletes, but between franchises and athletes. Nevertheless, legislation has been proposed in Sacramento to make out of state players ineligible for benefits. Assembly Bill 1309 would essentially bar any athlete from claiming benefits if they did not play for a California-based franchise. Predictably, all four major sports leagues have supported the legislation, and the players’ unions have similarly opposed it. AB 1309 does not abrogate the occupational disease/cumulative injury doctrine that has led to significant amounts of settlement.
The fate of AB 1309 will be a significant one for the question of workers’ compensation claims for athletes and we will update readers in this space as further developments occur.