Former NFL running back Stanley Winfrey joins MDL concussion case

A former running back for the Miami Dolphins and the Tampa Bay

Buccaneers who claims he suffers from damage relating to repeated hits and blows he took to the head while playing professional football in the mid-1970s has joined the multidistrict concussion litigation that is currently playing out against the NFL in Philadelphia.

Stanley Winfrey, who resides in Arkansas, alleges he currently suffers from symptoms associated with multiple traumatic brain injury and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, all as a result of the concussions he sustained during his career with the National Football League.

Winfrey, like the other thousands of former players who make up the named plaintiffs in the national class action that has been consolidated at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, claims that he is now also at a heightened risk of developing further adverse neurological symptoms down the road.

For more than a year-and-a-half, scores of former NFL players have been filing injury lawsuits against the league over allegations that the defendant purposely misled the athletes on the long-term health risks associated with concussions and other head trauma sustained during professional play.

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation eventually ordered the plethora of cases consolidated and transferred to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where U.S. District Judge Anita Brody is overseeing the massive case.

In April, Brody heard the first set of oral arguments in the MDL.

The jurist is currently weighing whether or not to dismiss the litigation or allow it to proceed to discovery.

Like the other suits in the MDL, the Winfrey case accuses the NFL of consistently denying any relationship between symptoms of CTE, or other neurodegenerative disorders, and repeated concussions or sub-concussive blows suffered by players during their respective careers.

The lawsuit was filed by attorney Anthony Tarricone, of the Boston firm Kreindler & Kreindler and Sol Weiss of Philadelphia’s Anapol Schwartz.

 

The federal case number is 2:13-cv-02872-AB.