football junkie
12-15-2006, 02:07 AM
Mike Webster finally received justice from the NFL and NFLPA on Wednesday. Unfortunately he didn't survive long enough to enjoy it.
NFL Hall of Famer Mike Webster's Estate Wins Benefits Ruling
By Cary O'Reilly
Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The National Football League's retirement plan wrongfully denied disability benefits to the late Hall-of-Fame center Mike Webster and must pay his estate, a federal appeals court said, upholding a lower court ruling.
Webster, who anchored the Pittsburgh Steelers' offensive line from 1974 to 1988 as the team won four Super Bowl championships, died in 2002 at the age of 50. He suffered brain damage from head injuries sustained during his 17-year career and was homeless during some of the 1990s, sleeping in his car and at a Pittsburgh bus station, according to court papers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, on Dec. 13 affirmed a Baltimore federal judge's 2005 ruling that the league's retirement plan must pay benefits reserved for players whose disabilities began while they were still playing football.
``This is a big win for Mike's children, who deserve a fair accounting from the NFL for the injuries their father suffered,'' lawyer Cy Smith of Zuckerman Spaeder in Baltimore, who represented the estate, said in a statement.
The unanimous ruling will result in the award of at least $1.5 million to $2 million to Webster's estate, and sets a precedent for other players who have argued that the league's Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan is unfairly restrictive in paying disability benefits, Smith said.
Lawyers for the plan argued that the onset of Webster's permanent disability occurred after he retired from the league in 1991, entitling him only to reduced benefits.
Brain Damage
Webster was diagnosed with brain damage in 1998, court documents show. Unable to work, he applied for assistance from the retirement plan and was awarded ``degenerative'' benefits worth about $600,000. After Webster died, his family went to court to get higher ``active'' benefits.
``The court overruled the unanimous decision of all six of the trustees of the plan, who spent a number of years'' considering Webster's application, said Douglas Ell, an attorney at Groom Law Group in Washington, who represented the league plan. He said he didn't know whether the plan will appeal.
The lower court case is Jani v. The Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan, 04cv816, U.S. District Court, District of Maryland (Baltimore). The appeal is Jani v. Bert Bell/Pete NFL Player Retirement Plan, 05-2386, U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit (Richmond, Virginia).
Background info:
By Greg Garber
ESPN.com
Mike Webster never made it to his son's 10th birthday party in Lodi, Wis. Lying in a dark room at the Budgetel Inn, some 20 minutes away in Madison, he was bed-bound in a haze of pain and narcotics, a bucket of vomit by his side.
Webster was often laced with a varying, numbing cocktail of medications: Ritalin or Dexedrine to keep him calm. Paxil to ease anxiety. Prozac to ward off depression. Klonopin to prevent seizures. Vicodin or Ultram or Darvocet or Lorcet, in various combinations, to subdue the general ache. And Eldepryl, commonly prescribed to patients who suffer from Parkinson's disease.
After 17 seasons in the National Football League, Webster had lost any semblance of control over his once-invincible body. His brain showed signs of dementia. His head throbbed constantly. He suffered from significant hearing loss. Three lumbar vertebrae and two cervical vertebrae ached from frayed and herniated discs. A chronically damaged right heel caused him to limp. His right shoulder was sore from a torn rotator cuff. His right elbow grew stiff from once being dislocated. His knees, the cartilage in them all but gone, creaked from years of bone grinding against bone. His knuckles were scarred and swollen. His fingers bent gruesomely wayward.
"He was too sick to come to my birthday party. He didn't even call me and I was mad," Garrett Webster remembered recently. "Now, I understand that there was something wrong."
Ten years later, there is only a faint strain of resentment in his voice. His father, the celebrated Hall of Fame center for the Pittsburgh Steelers, is gone now. Still, the mental snapshots, those harrowing memories, persist of the stoic man they called Iron Mike:
Desperate for a few moments of peace from the acute pain, repeatedly stunning himself, sometimes a dozen times, into unconsciousness with a black Taser gun. "The only way he could get to sleep," said Garrett. Glassy-eyed like a punch-drunk boxer, huddled alone, staring into space night after night at the Amtrak station in downtown Pittsburgh. "Living on potato chips and dry cereal," said Joe Gordon, a Steelers employee.
A formidable man, at 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds, who sometimes forgot to eat for days -- sleeping in his battered, black Chevy S-10 pickup truck, a garbage bag duct-taped over the missing window. "Sometimes he didn't seem to care," said Sunny Jani, the primary caregiver the last six years of his life.
Writing wandering journals in a cramped, earnest hand so convoluted in their spare eloquence that, upon reading them in his lucid moments, he would be moved to weep. "You had absolutely no idea what was going through his mind," said Colin, his oldest son.
The powerfully proud former athlete, anguished and curled up in a fetal position for three or four days, puzzling over his life, contemplating suicide and, in later years, placing those sad, rambling calls, almost daily in the later years, to friends and family when he couldn't find his way home. "All I see is trees," he'd say apologetically, almost in a whisper.
When Webster died in Pittsburgh on Sept, 24, 2002, at the age of 50, the official cause was heart failure. That was absurd, of course. Few players showed more heart than Webster in his marvelous 17-year NFL career. In the end, his body and brain left him a defeated man.
Webster's Steelers won four Super Bowls in six seasons from 1974-79 and rank as one of the league's greatest teams. Nine players from the Steelers' 1970s dynasty are enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Eight of them -- Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Jack Lambert, Joe Greene, Jack Ham, Mel Blount, Lynn Swann and John Stallworth -- reveled in the franchise's return to glory. Their missing comrade is a footnote worth considering. Amid the fervor and fanaticism that enveloped the Steel City this season is Webster's reminder of the daunting price the game can sometimes extract.
Sometime later this year a collision is likely to occur in a Baltimore courtroom. Civil Action No. WDQ-04-cv-1606, the Estate of Michael L. Webster v. The Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan and The NFL Player Supplemental Disability Plan, is working its way through Maryland's U.S. District Court.
The NFL already has paid Webster and his estate more than $600,000 -- $100,020 annually for the last three years of his life, plus a $309,230 retroactive payment made in December to cover his disability from 1996-99. Webster's surviving family -- ex-wife Pamela, 53, and four children, Brooke, 27; Colin, 25; Garrett, 20; and Hillary, 16 -- wants more. A lawsuit directed by Jani, the administrator of Webster's estate, seeks an additional $1.142 million in disability payments, plus legal fees and expenses, going back to his retirement after the 1990 season. The suit argues that Webster was mentally disabled when he left the game and that by denying Webster "active football" disability the NFL's pension board committed an "abuse of discretion."
"This isn't a knee that became inflamed after an old injury -- this is about Mike Webster's brain," said Cyril Smith, co-counsel for the plaintiffs. "He was hit in the head thousands of times and suffered many concussions at a time when the dangers weren't widely recognized. The evidence is clear that he was completely disabled by March of 1991."
The NFL contends there is no empirical evidence that Webster was disabled before 1996, noting that no doctor who assessed Webster in the original case saw him until after 1996. Regarding his competence, the NFL points to the same business dealings referred to by the estate.
"It's a very sad case," said Doug Ell, the lead attorney for the NFL retirement plan. "He was a great, great player. He tried to run all these businesses, all these companies and, ultimately, it's not clear that any of them succeeded. The Board can't say a guy is permanently disabled just because his businesses failed."
"Mike's story needs to be told," Pam Webster said from her home in Lodi, where she lives with three of her four children. "I don't want this man to die in vain.
"They're gladiators. When the game is over, these guys have to go home. And when it's over, a lot of them don't have a home to go to."
The rest of Webster's story:
Blood & Guts
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1972286
Man on the Moon
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1972287
Wandering through the Fog
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1972288
Sifting the Ashes
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1972289
NFL Hall of Famer Mike Webster's Estate Wins Benefits Ruling
By Cary O'Reilly
Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The National Football League's retirement plan wrongfully denied disability benefits to the late Hall-of-Fame center Mike Webster and must pay his estate, a federal appeals court said, upholding a lower court ruling.
Webster, who anchored the Pittsburgh Steelers' offensive line from 1974 to 1988 as the team won four Super Bowl championships, died in 2002 at the age of 50. He suffered brain damage from head injuries sustained during his 17-year career and was homeless during some of the 1990s, sleeping in his car and at a Pittsburgh bus station, according to court papers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, on Dec. 13 affirmed a Baltimore federal judge's 2005 ruling that the league's retirement plan must pay benefits reserved for players whose disabilities began while they were still playing football.
``This is a big win for Mike's children, who deserve a fair accounting from the NFL for the injuries their father suffered,'' lawyer Cy Smith of Zuckerman Spaeder in Baltimore, who represented the estate, said in a statement.
The unanimous ruling will result in the award of at least $1.5 million to $2 million to Webster's estate, and sets a precedent for other players who have argued that the league's Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan is unfairly restrictive in paying disability benefits, Smith said.
Lawyers for the plan argued that the onset of Webster's permanent disability occurred after he retired from the league in 1991, entitling him only to reduced benefits.
Brain Damage
Webster was diagnosed with brain damage in 1998, court documents show. Unable to work, he applied for assistance from the retirement plan and was awarded ``degenerative'' benefits worth about $600,000. After Webster died, his family went to court to get higher ``active'' benefits.
``The court overruled the unanimous decision of all six of the trustees of the plan, who spent a number of years'' considering Webster's application, said Douglas Ell, an attorney at Groom Law Group in Washington, who represented the league plan. He said he didn't know whether the plan will appeal.
The lower court case is Jani v. The Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan, 04cv816, U.S. District Court, District of Maryland (Baltimore). The appeal is Jani v. Bert Bell/Pete NFL Player Retirement Plan, 05-2386, U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit (Richmond, Virginia).
Background info:
By Greg Garber
ESPN.com
Mike Webster never made it to his son's 10th birthday party in Lodi, Wis. Lying in a dark room at the Budgetel Inn, some 20 minutes away in Madison, he was bed-bound in a haze of pain and narcotics, a bucket of vomit by his side.
Webster was often laced with a varying, numbing cocktail of medications: Ritalin or Dexedrine to keep him calm. Paxil to ease anxiety. Prozac to ward off depression. Klonopin to prevent seizures. Vicodin or Ultram or Darvocet or Lorcet, in various combinations, to subdue the general ache. And Eldepryl, commonly prescribed to patients who suffer from Parkinson's disease.
After 17 seasons in the National Football League, Webster had lost any semblance of control over his once-invincible body. His brain showed signs of dementia. His head throbbed constantly. He suffered from significant hearing loss. Three lumbar vertebrae and two cervical vertebrae ached from frayed and herniated discs. A chronically damaged right heel caused him to limp. His right shoulder was sore from a torn rotator cuff. His right elbow grew stiff from once being dislocated. His knees, the cartilage in them all but gone, creaked from years of bone grinding against bone. His knuckles were scarred and swollen. His fingers bent gruesomely wayward.
"He was too sick to come to my birthday party. He didn't even call me and I was mad," Garrett Webster remembered recently. "Now, I understand that there was something wrong."
Ten years later, there is only a faint strain of resentment in his voice. His father, the celebrated Hall of Fame center for the Pittsburgh Steelers, is gone now. Still, the mental snapshots, those harrowing memories, persist of the stoic man they called Iron Mike:
Desperate for a few moments of peace from the acute pain, repeatedly stunning himself, sometimes a dozen times, into unconsciousness with a black Taser gun. "The only way he could get to sleep," said Garrett. Glassy-eyed like a punch-drunk boxer, huddled alone, staring into space night after night at the Amtrak station in downtown Pittsburgh. "Living on potato chips and dry cereal," said Joe Gordon, a Steelers employee.
A formidable man, at 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds, who sometimes forgot to eat for days -- sleeping in his battered, black Chevy S-10 pickup truck, a garbage bag duct-taped over the missing window. "Sometimes he didn't seem to care," said Sunny Jani, the primary caregiver the last six years of his life.
Writing wandering journals in a cramped, earnest hand so convoluted in their spare eloquence that, upon reading them in his lucid moments, he would be moved to weep. "You had absolutely no idea what was going through his mind," said Colin, his oldest son.
The powerfully proud former athlete, anguished and curled up in a fetal position for three or four days, puzzling over his life, contemplating suicide and, in later years, placing those sad, rambling calls, almost daily in the later years, to friends and family when he couldn't find his way home. "All I see is trees," he'd say apologetically, almost in a whisper.
When Webster died in Pittsburgh on Sept, 24, 2002, at the age of 50, the official cause was heart failure. That was absurd, of course. Few players showed more heart than Webster in his marvelous 17-year NFL career. In the end, his body and brain left him a defeated man.
Webster's Steelers won four Super Bowls in six seasons from 1974-79 and rank as one of the league's greatest teams. Nine players from the Steelers' 1970s dynasty are enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Eight of them -- Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Jack Lambert, Joe Greene, Jack Ham, Mel Blount, Lynn Swann and John Stallworth -- reveled in the franchise's return to glory. Their missing comrade is a footnote worth considering. Amid the fervor and fanaticism that enveloped the Steel City this season is Webster's reminder of the daunting price the game can sometimes extract.
Sometime later this year a collision is likely to occur in a Baltimore courtroom. Civil Action No. WDQ-04-cv-1606, the Estate of Michael L. Webster v. The Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan and The NFL Player Supplemental Disability Plan, is working its way through Maryland's U.S. District Court.
The NFL already has paid Webster and his estate more than $600,000 -- $100,020 annually for the last three years of his life, plus a $309,230 retroactive payment made in December to cover his disability from 1996-99. Webster's surviving family -- ex-wife Pamela, 53, and four children, Brooke, 27; Colin, 25; Garrett, 20; and Hillary, 16 -- wants more. A lawsuit directed by Jani, the administrator of Webster's estate, seeks an additional $1.142 million in disability payments, plus legal fees and expenses, going back to his retirement after the 1990 season. The suit argues that Webster was mentally disabled when he left the game and that by denying Webster "active football" disability the NFL's pension board committed an "abuse of discretion."
"This isn't a knee that became inflamed after an old injury -- this is about Mike Webster's brain," said Cyril Smith, co-counsel for the plaintiffs. "He was hit in the head thousands of times and suffered many concussions at a time when the dangers weren't widely recognized. The evidence is clear that he was completely disabled by March of 1991."
The NFL contends there is no empirical evidence that Webster was disabled before 1996, noting that no doctor who assessed Webster in the original case saw him until after 1996. Regarding his competence, the NFL points to the same business dealings referred to by the estate.
"It's a very sad case," said Doug Ell, the lead attorney for the NFL retirement plan. "He was a great, great player. He tried to run all these businesses, all these companies and, ultimately, it's not clear that any of them succeeded. The Board can't say a guy is permanently disabled just because his businesses failed."
"Mike's story needs to be told," Pam Webster said from her home in Lodi, where she lives with three of her four children. "I don't want this man to die in vain.
"They're gladiators. When the game is over, these guys have to go home. And when it's over, a lot of them don't have a home to go to."
The rest of Webster's story:
Blood & Guts
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1972286
Man on the Moon
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1972287
Wandering through the Fog
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1972288
Sifting the Ashes
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1972289