The Court Creates an Additional MDL for Personal Injury Claims

On September 9, 2016, the court created a second MDL for “Single Sport/Single School” personal injury cases.

The court explained that if the Second Amended Proposed Settlement is granted final approval, it would resolve of the claims that were filed in the Medical Monitoring MDL.  However, it would not resolve of the personal injury claims asserted against the NCAA.

After the Second Amended Proposed Settlement was reached, there was an influx of cases filed in the Northern District of Illinois and other district courts by student athletes from a single sport at a single school that allege claims for personal injury.  The cases that have been filed in other districts were eventually transferred by the MDL Panel to the Norther District of Illinois as part of the Medical Monitoring MDL.  Those cases that were filed in the Northern District of Illinois and assigned to other judges in the district were reassigned to the Medical Monitoring MDL by the Executive Committee. As such, the medical monitoring cases were commingled with the single sport/single school personal injury cases.

In an effort to separate the single sport/single school personal injury cases that are not subject to the Second Amended Settlement from the medical monitoring cases that are subject to Second Amended Settlement, the court created a separate track within the Medical Monitoring MDL for the single sport/single school personal injury cases.  The court captioned the Personal Injury MDL as follows: In re: NCAA Student-Athlete Concussion Injury Litigation – Single Sport/Single School (Football), MDL No. 2492, Master Dkt. No. 16-cv-08728 (N.D. Ill.) (the “Personal Injury MDL”).  The court then explained that any similar football-related personal injury cases that are filed in the Norther District of Illinois or transferred to the Norther District of Illinois by the MDL Panel (tag-along cases) will be designated as related cases to the Personal Injury MDL.

The court also assigned the Honorable John Z. Lee to oversee the coordinated and consolidated pretrial proceedings concerning these cases.  This, of course, is great news to claimants as Hon. Judge Lee is the judge who facilitated the $75 million settlement with the NCAA in the Medical Monitoring MDL.

Stay tuned for more upcoming blogs about the progression of the litigation against the NCAA.  To learn more about Circelli, Walter & Young, PLLC, please visit http://www.cwylaw.com/

Leave a Reply