With the NFL’s concussion litigation officially concluded, the NFL can focus on litigation against insurance companies that will be expected to compensate the league for all or part of the expenses arising from the concussion lawsuits.
According to Daniel Kaplan of SportsBusiness Daily, the league has settled with six of the insurance companies. However, there are “dozens” of insurance companies in play.
The settlements were mentioned in a recent court filing, which indicates that the league currently is discussing potential settlement with other insurance companies, but not with all of them. A status conference in the case is scheduled for Tuesday.
Full-blown discovery and a trial in open court would expose to public scrutiny plenty of the what-the-league-knew-and-when-the-league-knew-it details that remained concealed by the settlement of the underlying concussion lawsuits. Which gives the insurance companies real leverage against the league, since the last thing the league wants is for media, fans, and potentially meddling politicians to see memos, documents, and transcripts demonstrating (possibly) the lengths to which the league went to fend off a potential existential threat before 2009, when the league had no choice but to deal with the problem.