Sports Class Actions
Overview
Our Sports Class Action Team is an integral part of the firm’s Sports & Entertainment Group, which represents professional sports teams, leagues, universities, athletic conferences, the NCAA, Olympic bodies and numerous businesses that operate within the sports industry. Our team handles some of the most prominent sports class action litigation in the country, which includes representing every team in the NHL in the multidistrict litigation regarding concussion injury claims, defending a collegiate sports conference in an antitrust class action regarding grant-in-aid for student-athletes, and serving as national coordinating counsel for the NCAA for all of their sports injury litigation.
The sports industry is relationship-driven, and we understand its unique attributes as we navigate the complexities of managing class action litigation. Our Sports Litigation Practice is comprehensive and, alongside class actions, spans everything from confidential, high-stakes sports arbitrations involving ownership disputes, player disputes and executive disputes to wrongful death cases. For more information regarding our Sports Litigation Practice please visit our dedicated page.
Meet The Team
Experience
- Lead counsel for 30 clubs in the National Hockey League in the MDL concussion cases. Represent a number of NHL clubs in ongoing individual concussion claims still pending. Following the successful defeat of the motion to certify a class, we have continued to represent NHL clubs in ongoing individual concussion litigation (as well as wholly unrelated litigation matters such as confidential arbitrations).
- As concussion litigation exploded nationwide, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) recently turned to us to serve as national coordinating counsel over their sports-related concussion litigation. We serve as national coordinating counsel for all of the NCAA’s concussion, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and head injury litigation on both a classwide and individual basis. In our national counsel role, we supervise and assist in more than 400 lawsuits ranging in sports from volleyball to lacrosse to football for claims ranging from wrongful death CTE claims to sickle cell trait cases in state and federal courts across the country.
- We handle wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases involving professional sports teams. For example, the firm recently secured the dismissal with prejudice of personal injury claims brought by a former NHL enforcer, Michael Peluso. A former lead class representative in the NHL class action, Mr. Peluso abandoned this status in order to pursue individual claims.
- We advise on high-profile wrongful death and catastrophic injury claims involving fans at sporting venues.
- We have represented physicians and athletic trainers in litigation asserted by former football players in the NFL and its former European subsidiary. In these cases, the former players alleged that the physicians and trainers failed to properly diagnose the players’ head injuries or improperly allowed the players to return to play too soon.
- Represented a number of prominent U.S. universities in a confidential internal review and audit of the schools’ athletic departments’ concussion protocols and practices. These representations serve as an example of our Concussion Protocol Comprehensive and Outside Best Practices Review (BPR), which BCLP Partner Chris Schmidt has designed to identify areas for potential improvement in an athletic organization’s concussion protocol and practices. As a result of this, Mr. Schmidt has conducted internal investigations and audits of the athletic departments of major research universities’ concussion protocols and practices.
- Represented an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer in class action alleging defendant engaged in fraudulent practices related to the sale of video games.
- Represented client in class action in California relative to Staples Center union hall referral practices.
- Represent outdoor sportsman group in putative class action alleging violations of state consumer fraud statutes related to purported inaccurate advertisements.
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