Players win court battle for retired workers comp

Federal judge Paul Crotty of the Southern District of New York has issued an injunction requiring all NFL teams and owners to stop seeking to reduce the worker compensation benefits due to former NFL players as a result of injuries they suffered while playing the game.

The players had won a previous ruling on this issue, but had found that the NFL had been ignoring the decision on workers comp during the negotiations for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. The league's argument was that what was being withheld was new workers' compensation proceedings, which occurred after the initial ruling on the case had been issued in 2009 and that should not be covered following changes to the CBA last March.

Judge Crotty declined to hold NFL management in contempt of court.

"Workers compensation is a significant benefit for former players who suffered severe injuries during their playing days," the NFLPA said in a statement. "The NFLPA brought this case to protect those men and to force NFL teams and owners to live up to their obligations to the game's greats."

The NFL issued a response to the ruling on the website NFLLabor.com: "The NFLPA's statements regarding the court's ruling are completely inaccurate. The federal court decision issued last week concerned only the question of the proper calculation of workers compensation benefits received by NFL players who also have received from their clubs injury protection payments under the recently expired CBA. The court ruled that a prior arbitration decision on how such offsets should be calculated under the NFL Player Contract should be enforced. The NFL clubs have fully abided by that decision. Contrary to the NFLPA's statement, there was no finding by the federal court of any 'unlawful' conduct or any finding that an NFL club has failed to pay workers compensation benefits due to players under state law. It should also be noted that this subject was extensively discussed in the recent CBA negotiations that were abruptly terminated by the NFLPA."

 The way we see it

While this is a victory for the players over the owners, it is not a major surprise nor is it expected to have much of an impact on the CBA negotiations. The major winners here are the recently retired players who hadn't been receiving workers compensation from the league.

Source: http://www.profootballweekly.com/2011/03/28/players-win-court-battle-for-retired-workers-comp

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