Two Ex-Players Leverage Connections in N.F.L. Workers’ Comp Cases
By ALAN SCHWARZ
NYT
As workers’ compensation lawyers go, Ron Mix and Mel Owens understand their clients’ problems better than most.
While Mix was a Hall of Fame lineman with the San Diego Chargers in the 1960s, he played the same brutal game that has left his contemporaries experiencing early-onset dementia at a rate several times that of the national population. Owens, a starting linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams in the 1980s, belonged to an era whose players can only wonder if their fate will be similar or worse.
Mix and Owens have leveraged their connections to represent about 1,000 retired players in the workers’ compensation system of California, the only jurisdiction that allows long-retired professional athletes to pursue workers’ compensation for cumulative injuries, even if they played only one game in the state in their careers. Their clients have received awards that probably total more than $100 million.
What their clients seldom receive, however, is the lifetime medical care and security for which workers’ compensation is primarily designed. More than 90 percent of the players represented by Mix and Owens forgo the extremely likely prospect of lifetime medical care for their football injuries by taking lump-sum settlements.
(More here.)
NYT
As workers’ compensation lawyers go, Ron Mix and Mel Owens understand their clients’ problems better than most.
While Mix was a Hall of Fame lineman with the San Diego Chargers in the 1960s, he played the same brutal game that has left his contemporaries experiencing early-onset dementia at a rate several times that of the national population. Owens, a starting linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams in the 1980s, belonged to an era whose players can only wonder if their fate will be similar or worse.
Mix and Owens have leveraged their connections to represent about 1,000 retired players in the workers’ compensation system of California, the only jurisdiction that allows long-retired professional athletes to pursue workers’ compensation for cumulative injuries, even if they played only one game in the state in their careers. Their clients have received awards that probably total more than $100 million.
What their clients seldom receive, however, is the lifetime medical care and security for which workers’ compensation is primarily designed. More than 90 percent of the players represented by Mix and Owens forgo the extremely likely prospect of lifetime medical care for their football injuries by taking lump-sum settlements.
(More here.)
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