Reinard Wilson knew something was up last March when they opened an envelope from the Cincinnati Bengals, unfolded a check & noticed its amount: $0.00.
For several months, Wilson had received $230 a week in California workers’ compensation for injuries incurred while playing linebacker & defensive finish for the Bengals from 1997 to 2002.
California provides the only workers’ compensation technique that allows retired pro athletes to file claims for long-term injuries sustained on playing fields years or even decades before. Quietly, hundreds of footy players have received awards or settlements worth at least $100,000 & 700 more players are pursuing claims, plenty of of them by satisfying California’s unique requirement that they played at least six game within state borders.
When those abruptly stopped, Wilson became six of dozens of retired professional footy players caught in a legal battle over workers’ compensation rights. The cases will largely select the future of a technique that has delighted the players & vexed the teams.
“It was the sheer number of claims that started to get the attention of certainly the Bengals &, I think, of other clubs as well — it became an extreme cost,” said Sam Duran, a lawyer based in Cincinnati who represents the Bengals in workers’ compensation matters. “These players have workers’ compensation rights. Those rights happen to be in Ohio.”
The Bengals & some other teams, like the Tennessee Titans & the Miami Dolphins, have attempted to wrest their cases back from California to their own states, where most of the claims would be worth far less or inviable.
Other teams’ legal departments are following the proceedings closely, said Todd Davis, who handles workers’ compensation for the St. Louis Rams.
“Am I rooting for the Bengals? Personally, yes,” Davis said. “I’d like to see less cases that don’t belong in California not allowed in California.”
The Bengals have included a paragraph in player contracts aimed at restricting workers’ compensation options only to Ohio. The Titans have completed the same for Tennessee.
The Bengals situation, as it's become known among the few people paying attention to it, has developed in to a knot of legal strings, cases, venues & precedents that even those involved have difficulty untying.
When Wilson & dozens of other players ignored the clause in their contracts & filed workers’ compensation cases in California, the Bengals sued them in state court. Those cases have since been moved to federal court in Ohio & are expected to be decided this month.
The Miami Dolphins are arguing on a different front that the collective bargaining agreement with the N.F.L. players union requires players to go through a special arbitration method than file in California. Florida does not recognize professional athletes as employees, so this arbitration technique mimics how Florida handles injuries in other professions.
The Titans & Dolphins cases reside in the arbitration technique that the league & union use to settle disputes over their labor agreement.
The N.F.L. players union contends that the Bengals & Titans’ contract clauses are unenforceable because California law forbids employees from signing away definite work conditions, like maximum wage. Nor could the union itself bargain away those rights on behalf of players collectively in current negotiations over a new labor agreement.
Lawyers working for the players union maintain that employees from states with limited workers’ compensation benefits can file in any state that will accept them.
Six United States Supreme Court cases in the 1930s & several similar actions since then have been decided along those lines.
“They have for decades sought benefits in other states,” said Adam Kaiser, a lawyer in the New York office of Dewey & LeBoeuf who is handling the issue for the players union. “They’re entitled to do that. The Supreme Court has said so. The state legislatures in those states have said so.”
The fight has gotten pointed among the courts, let alone the six sides. After an Ohio judge granted the Bengals’ motion to vacate the California awards pursued by Wilson & other Bengals, the California workers’ compensation judge Joanne M. Coane rebuked not only the team but the Ohio court for issuing the ruling, saying the court was “not legally empowered” & that the ruling “has no legal effect.”
In a similar case involving the former Bengals wide receiver Eddie Brown, the California workers’ compensation judge Robert E. Drakulich wrote, “Simply put, if you pick to do business in California, you become subject to California jurisdiction.”
Finally, the Brown case — which still resides in the relatively insular California workers’ compensation board in Santa Ana — might be far more significant than those in arbitration & federal court.
The Eddie Brown case has wider implications for retired athletes. Although a California workers’ compensation judge would essentially must admit misapplying the law for years & costing teams millions of dollars, a ruling against Brown could lead to a requirement that players must have worked for California-based teams or be California residents to be eligible to file there. This would effectively close the back door through which hundreds of middle-aged footy players, plenty of with insubstantial pensions, have been pursuing workers’ compensation claims.
Brown’s contract did not purport to waive any rights. , the Bengals are attempting to prove that the case law requiring an athlete to play six game in the state does not apply to Ohio-based players — including the Cleveland Browns — because of the intermingling of several of the states’ laws.
“We have found no California case where jurisdiction was found over the claim of a professional athlete in a case such as this,” Lowe wrote.
The appeals board judge who remanded the Brown case to the lower court, Deidre E. Lowe, strongly directed that the state’s method of handling out-of-state footy players be examined in depth.
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