It’s hard to talk about sports — especially football but also hockey and soccer — without the discussion coming around to severe head injuries.
A forum last week at the City Club of Chicago – just as we start football season – was called “Whose Bell Was Really Rung?”
Liz Nicholson Sullivan said players long retired devolve into depression and fits of rage.
“He was very concerned and said, ‘Maybe my problems are I’m brain damaged from football,'” she said of her husband, Gerry Sullivan, who has been suffering for years. “I’m thinking, this is PTSD. Never in a million years did I think, nor did the guys who played would think (it was a concussion), because they knew they would be orthopedically shot by the age of 33, not that they would be brain damaged.”
Tom Demetrio, a well-known Chicago trial lawyer, told the City Club crowd the NFL was ingenious to settle litigation in a fashion with nary a piece or paper nor deposition. “You can’t have a fender bender and not have about four depositions go,” he quipped.