Unfortunately, I think we are witnessing the beginning of the end for high school athletics, or at least contact sports. The school districts will not be able to afford the insurance to continue to run the sports programs if the district is going to have to make payouts every time a player is injured playing a contact sport. What ever happened to the legal doctrine of assumed risk. What that doctrine basically says is that when you knowingly engage in an activity that carries a risk of injury, you accept the responsibility for any injuries you suffer so long as there was no negligence involved that caused those injuries. Anyone who goes skiing should be familiar with this concept since the notice of assumed risk is normally printed right on your lift ticket. If the family agrees that the coaching staff did not do anything intentional that caused the injury, then why did they sue to start with. The school district is not responsible for providing a safety net for your kid if he gets hurt playing a contact sport. That is what you should be carrying insurance for.

The school district must have felt that there was some liability risk due to the coaches actions, even though they did not admit to any. Otherwise, this settlement would make absolutely no sense. When I went to school, parents signed releases when their children went out for an athletic team to prevent just these types of claims. I guess they either must not be doing that in the San Diego school district or they felt there was some negligence involved on the part of the coaching staff. From the excerpt from the deposition, it sounds like coaches may have ignored warning signs of a problem with this player.

I just worry that this settlement is going to lead to a rash of lawsuits that is going to bankrupt school districts across the state, if not the country. I hope these parents will be proud of themselves ten years from now when high school kid no longer can play these contact sports because the schools can no longer get insurance to cover them.

"Whatever happened to the legal doctrine of assumed risk?" It went the same way as all personal responsibility in the United States. Everything now is always someone else's responsibility.

Yea, too many people are not taking responsibility for they're own actions and chances...people know the risks, they just don't care...It has turned into a blame game. Bureaucracy has replaced common sense.

As you see when you read the story,its not about it being dangerous,its about the coach being negligent in allowing an injured player to play rather than sending him for medical treatment. The stuff about not admitting fault and the family not blaming the coach is just legal double talk. Its fairly common. If admitting fault is a stumbling block to a party paying for damages,usually,they are allowed to avoid it. Think about it,if you were injured,you sued someone and the choice was to go to court and risk losing,or simply take a negotiated settlement where no one admits fault and get the care you need with it,any reasonable person would take the latter.

The school on the other hand may feel they can win,however,there is a very real risk they could lose. If they lose,then it sets a precedent and they don't gnat that. They have to be careful not to admit responsibility though as it would be used against them in the future. As such,they negotiated a settlement that both parties could live with rather than taking the risk of going to court.

People need to read the article. Its pretty clear what was going on and why the suit had merits. It sounds dumb on its face,and people know there is a risk of injury playing football. However,the coach has a responsibility too. If a player is injured,especially in a SCHOOL activity,he has a responsibility to make sure the CHILD he is responsible for receives medical attention. If he had sent the child to the hospital,and he still ended up with permanent injuries I would say the coach was blamele

Consider this scenario. A child hits his head in PE. In his next class,he says his head hurts and he needs to go to the nurses office. The teacher refuses and makes him sit there for nearly an hour at which point he collapses. He ends up like the kid in the article. The TEACHER may be responsible (not the PE coach) because they were negligent. If your negligent and cause an injury like that,then you or your employer may end up being financially responsible. Thats how it works. The degree of responsibility of course depends on your degree of negligence,which depends on how much information you had an if you were trained to spot the issue.

Highschool football coaches usually have health or athletics or physical education degrees. Those degrees cover a level of basic medical information. That means the coach should know how to treat sprains,give first aid for a fracture,or understand the seriousness of a head injury. If the coach had such training,then it increases his level of responsibility and the responsibility of his employer,if he did NOT have such training,the school may have been negligent in not finding someone who did,or giving him the requisite training.

It sounds like the district only offered to pay if the family would say they were not at fault. If you read the second half of the story, you see the troubling parts of the story.

I think they had to agree to dismiss responsibility just to get that much. Inadvertantly, they were responsible though, because they insisted he play even though he felt unwell. High school football players are notoriously not whiners. The coach should have listened. Perhaps this boy and his family would have a different life.

Students who want to play sports should be made aware of possible injuries if they are 18 and older and if they want to play sign waivers. Children under 18 should have the possible injuries explained to the parents and the children and all three sign waivers.

Same with professional sports. Nobody is forcing these people to play.

When I was 12 and playing baseball, I caught a ball with an ungloved hand and it forced the thumb back to the wrist. I still have aches and pains 50 years later. While playing football, I badly sprained the big toe and the pain is still there. And this was all kid stuff.

All sports is big money and people are going to be hurt and killed. They want to try for the big money and get the big money, they have to give up something.

1st, at the very least, a humans brain is not fully developed until the late teens. 2nd, since when can a hormone infused body make major decisions about life.......let alone any real significant future based on 16 to maybe 17 years of experience?

A (and I assume a college educated adult) chose a possible game victory over the welfare of HIS STUDENT...he knew about the headaches.....and he was wrong to put him in the game...especially when you consider he let him sit out during practices for headaches.

I love the game, but anyone in a power position over any student needs to look at not their own needs and wants.....but what is in the best service to student they are entrusted to in the role of a mentor, educate or care for.......This goes for every person.

As far as life long ramifications to this now 22 year old man.....when you get down to it.....it is no different than the life long ramifications to underage boy or girl molested by any adult in a position of trust.

I think San Diego School District got out of it very inexpensively.

I believe the only reason the family agreed that the school/coaches/et,al. weren't responsible is because it was a SETTLEMENT, meaning that to keep it from going to court, both sides SETTLED out of court. I'm sure if the school district hadn't settled out of court, then during the trial the testimony of the other student and the assistant student trainer would have been used to prove that the coach ignored warning signs that the player was in distress.

We live in a society where people no longer take ownership of their own actions....At what point would his parents have responsibility in the health and safety of their minor child and not just the school? Should the parents not have taken their son to the doctor when he was complaining of headaches and stopped him from playing? I feel for the young man, but it's a risk one takes playing contact sports.

Personal responsibility no longer exists in the modern "progessive" age. These days it's always someone else's fault. We don't even have a high diving board at the town pools any more. Thank the sue-happy liberals for making fun illegal.

The guy tells the coach he is having headaches and the coach forces him to play but you guys blame the player. That's like a bus driver telling his company he is to tired to drive buy is FORCED to anyway. Oh, that's right it happened here is Va. and four people were killed. You are right blame the driver, he is in jail, and let the coach, I mean company, off the hook. Makes sense to me.

the coach forces him to play

How did he force him to play?

He had headaches for a week prior. Why are the parents not responsible? Why should a coach or school district be expected to carry all of the responsibility?

How did he force him to play?

ron-1902603 - Are you seriously going to argue that coach not in a position of authority over the kid. If he asked to be held out of the game and the coach said no get in. He has two choices, quit football or go in.

So quit, this was no five year old kid.

he was 17 or 18 years old.

fen stupid.how about the parnets, oh they still let him play....gold diggers off the tax payers

Would this kid have given his school a "safety net", a giant pile of cash, if he had gone on to become a rich NFL player? F NO! Go for the glory, the big bucks, but if you get hurt, doing something YOU CHOOSE to do, you sue the school?? Lawyers are the scum of this earth, the bottom feeding, bacterial infection of civilization and they are destroying this country. DESTROYING IT.

skup - "He has two choices, quit football or go in."

Ok, so go in and fake a knee or ankle injury.... not too difficult to get back to the bench.

Well said, CRB. If anything accidental or unfortunate happens now a days, instead of it just being 'one of the risks of playing the game' people have to sue. There's a large problem in our court system where personal responsibility and accountability are being tossed right out of the window. Everyone knows Football is a sport where injuries occur fairly often yet he chose to play anyways and with that should come the risks....but no...god forbid anyone take responsibility for their own actions. If this kid had such a horrible headache to begin with, why didn't he go see a doctor before? 4.4 MILLION sure as hell isn't a safety net, it's a winning lottery ticket.

noiwontyesiwill

That was an all time ridiculous statement even for msnbc.com. At 17 you can drive. At 17 a man can get married. At 17 you pay taxes and can have children. Hundreds of years ago, 14/15 years got married and raised families.

And what you forgot is that the school, the coach and everyone involved is not paying a dime. THE TAX PAYERS ARE PAYING THE 4.4 MILLION. AND THAT MEANS YOU!

Yes it was a tragedy, just like my daughter falling through a rotten trap door on a roof and falling 35 feet, getting a fractured skull, broken vein, blood entering the brain and a possibility of brain damage. I had to sit there for two days worrying and hoping that the operation to remove part of the skull would reduce the pressure and allow the surgeons to sew the broken vein.

But it was her fault. She should not have been on the roof in the first place. She was 12 and even today 26 years later you can see the scars on her face. We didn't sue.

So suing is BS. The boy was playing football. He didn't feel, well go to the school clinic and then to a doctor. Shi* is going to happen and people have to take responsibility especially a 22 year old.

Your argument is a joke. If he murdered someone, he would go to jail and the excuse that his brain is not completely formed would be a joke in a trial. They put 14 year olds in jail for murder.

I know 70 year old people who have brains that are not completely formed or have dementia. They are responsible.

This is for js in sd from the article and court documents

"In the deposition, Bingen said that a week before the injury, Scott complained to the team's athletic trainer about having headaches, which caused Scott to miss certain parts of practice.

Bingen also said that just a few minutes before the game, Scott asked if he could sit out the first quarter because his head was hurting, but Bingen claims Coach Chris Hauser refused to take him out."

When that happened and the coach would not take the player out for at least the 1st quarter, the coach, school, and district assumed responsibility for any and all injuries he sustained.

This is for others, because he was 17 at the time of the injury he was still classified as a minor in the state of California. Meaning the coaches, school, and district were totally responsible.

As for his parents, I would have to ask him if he had mentioned anything about his headaches to his parents.

The other problems I have is if he did complain about his headaches, all the school would have done is send him to a GP not a Neurosurgeon. If any say why not send him to a neurologist, in my 25.5 years with a TBI, I have yet to meet a competent neurologist that has any understanding about head injuries.

Great!

Now the school district will be 4.4 million short of funding for everything else they have to pay for to stay operational.

And, by extension, the taxpayers are now covering this cost.

Up next: way, way more lawsuits such as this for even minor injuries like hurt self esteem! Expect broke school districts soon.

The problem was that the coach knew about it and here was his response "The former student trainer, Brianna Bingen, also said she heard the trainer, Scott Gommel, bring it up to head coach Chris Hauser, but said she heard Hauser yell that "Scotty was his (expletive) football player and if he wanted to put Scotty in the game he was going to damn well put him in the game."

Read more: #ixzz1om359Da8

If the coach ignored those warning signs, then the district IS responsible. and of course as part of the payoff, the family has to say they don't think the school district is responsible. Legalese can be pretty complicated/ asinine.

For starters, let's get organized sports out of public schools as many european countries do. This would serve two purposes:

!. It would force the Jocks to concentrate on their studies and not on sports. Because of the ignorance inherent in many Texas high school Jocks, these guys are assigned assistants to help them with the homework they can't do by themselves, among other things.

2. It would cause schools to focus on their mission, to educate our youth and not make heroes out of 250lb goons who can do little intellectually, but certainly can break some other student's bones. It would also cause their pom-pom wielding females and their moms to concentrate more on studies.

Hey, if they want to play organized sports 8 hours a day, let them do it after the final school bell rings and on weekends, but don't make me pay for it!

We have a high school here in the San Antonio area that has a very low student achievement ratio, that is almost obsessed with their sports agenda to the point that, in order to build their new sports arena, they placed a heavy school tax burden on the homeowners who are not very happy with what has happened.

Sorry people, but Texas has the highest percentage of 25-year-olds, without a high school diploma, than any other state, but they know how to crowd sports stadiums! I guess to them, "Ignorance is Bliss"!

Yea, too many people are not taking responsibility for they're own actions and chances...people know the risks, they just don't care...It has turned into a blame game. Bureaucracy has replaced common sense.

I don't think you remember high school very well. If anything, the coaches and school downplay the risks considerably and try to dismiss them as not very significant. Of course if more people actually cared about the risks maybe football wouldn't be so popular. Or maybe people are just a bunch of callous @!$%#s who want their bloodlust satisfied.

The player asked to be excused from the first quarter as he did not feel up to it. He'd been complaining of headaches for some time. The Assistant informed to coach as well there was a problem. The coach is paid to teach kids physical fitness, sportmanship and skills not to win games at all costs. (or that's how it should be!!) The player was a child, a minor, and felt he had to listen to his coach. Blame seems pretty simple here. I'd doubt the boy told his mom. My first instinct as a mom would be get my child to a Dr. ASAP if he was complaining of headaches etc.. What mom can't put 2 and 2 together when her child is playing a contact sport??? Dads might brush it off, not most moms!! The school district is probably lucky the family settled. Not sure the settlement amount will be enough to see this kid thru the rest of his natural life especially after his folks are too old to care for him or pass on. This kind of care is EXPENSIVE. I wish this young man and his family well.

Personal accountability isn't dead. I am recovering from a fairly high speed impact with an old growth hemlock tree while skiing two weeks ago. I didn't sue anybody, I was the guy who skied the trees and missed a turn. Fortunately my injury isn't life changing, just season ending but even if it were to have proved fatal, it would not be the ski resorts fault.

The fact that a the family elected to sue would suggest that there was some negligence by the coaching staff. That they state otherwise after the fact is contradictory.

I help cover high school sports for a small local paper. I hang on the sideline and take many hundreds of photos during each football game. I've witnessed some wicked hits during the few seasons I've been doing this but luckily none of the players has ever been seriously injured. I know that each of the players has to sign a waiver but an attorney once told me, anyone can sue anyone for anything at anytime.

In our country today, freedom is falling victim to greedumb! Every lawsuit filed modifies our behavior. Always this behavior modification is toward exercising restraint. This has lead to an ever more cautious society. Caution isn't what got us to this point. A cautious man never prospers and so it goes with a cautious society.

sighber: when you ski on any mountain, you are takng a risk. minors and their parents who have been injured while skiing cannot sue the mountain resort, because it is posted on every where that you ski at your own risk. Also if you ski out of bounds and become lost you must pay for the rescue teams time after they have found you.

The biggest difference is he was participating in a school sport. If he had told his parents and they did nothing then it is their own fault. He must not have informed his parents, but did inform his coach (who is to watch out for the child's best interest)and knew the child wanted to be out for at least the 1st quarter. The child did what he was told to do by a supposedly responsible adult, and became injured, therefore the responsibility is on the coach not the child.

Another example when my brother was injured in a game the coach immediatly pulled him out of the game.

I think Hawking would think that having to sue for money as the only way to pay for the care required for injury is absurd. I suspect he would think we Americans are crazy for having a health care system where your left to rot in the gutter if you cant afford medical treatment and think a much better system would be some sort of universal coverage. Hes a smart man so I suspect that while his first instinct would be that we should go with a socialized medical system,he would be open to the argument that such a system might not work well in America and a single payer system might be better for us. I suspect that he would be able to separate the questions of whether the man deserves to be compensated if someone was responsible for such a terrible injury and the question of who was going to pay for the long term treatment he required. I also suspect that he would have a good understanding of the sort of long term treatment someone in that position would require.

The thing is,Hawking will have a somewhat different perspective than many people,as he has a medical condition that is in someways similar,however, his medical care is payed for by his countries government. Most British subjects would not trade their medical coverage for what we have. They think our system is absurd. They may have complaints about certain parts of it,and think it can be improved,however they want to make small changes rather than scrapping it.In fact,even to the people who WANT radical free market based heath care reform, radical reform means a single payer system with the ability to supplement your coverage with private co-insurance rather than what we have.

There's a great amount of difference. The young man was in High School, Stephen Hawkins was already studying for his Doctorate, or was already a profesor and theoritacal physicist.

The young man had a brutal headache, a trainer told the responsible party, the coach, about the youg man. The young man also asked to be kept out of the game for a period of time. The coach ignore both.

Stephen Hawking has ALS (Lou Gherig's Disease), a congenerative disease that progresses with age and can normally show up in the teens to late twenties, sometimes later.

Neither case is similar. A concussion doesn't cause ALS, rather it's a brain injury. The other is a debillitating illness, not caused by anything other than a gene gone wild.

Not similar. Period.

But Hawkings has a disease not cause by someone else's negligence. For the life of me, I cannot see your connection.

What would you do if this were your child, Michael M.? There is where a different perspective might come into play.

Hawkins was not injured by someone taking care of him. The person who could even possibly consider suing is God....and he does not believe in him.

I think that you don't have a clue as to what Steven Hawkins would think. As long as we are saying what other people think, I think that all of the other posters here think you are FOS.

I'm sure that Hawking would come up with some mathematical formula proving that people can always find someone else who is liable and would verify that $4.4 million is not just an arbitrary number.

Hawking knows that the human race is doomed because we waste immense amounts of time and money making sure that EVERYONE is provided for no matter how little they contribute to society... thereby eventually sealing the fate of the entire human race.

He would not be surprised at all that $4.4 million is being taken from education to provide a "safety net" for one.

So what do we do then?? Euthanize all people we beleive don't contibute to our society or pay for their own care??? pjam09 will you volunteer to exit the planet if you fail to meet your own criteria for societal contribution??? BTW who gets to determine which of us meets the criteria? Think that would bring us closer to the destruction of the human race than helping those in need!~!!!!!!

I've seen many coaches go to far however. In practice one day the head coach had us working on a type of rolling block and player after player took a knee to the kidneys and when they tried to tell him about it he started screaming that they were just trying to slack off and weren't doing it right. It wasn't until one player got most of the seniors together and told the coach that we actually thought it was dangerous and the coach stormed off the field that we actually stopped.

I know coaches aren't medically trained but if a player is saying that he has bad enough headaches that he can't practice or wants to sit out part of a game, I would at least get him medically evaluated if for no other reason you can tell him to stop trying to slack off.

Thats not true. Look at the course work for a physical education degree. Its not like the are doctors,but they SHOULD understand how to deal with the kinds of injuries that are common. Personally,I think they should go a step farther and make them be EMTs.Its a few weeks worth of training and relatively cheap.

While I agree somewhat, Ryan, I think the issue here is that the young man was having problems and coach ignored it.

While I agree somewhat, Ryan, I think the issue here is that the young man was having problems and coach ignored it.

Apparently so did his mother.

The child was injured prior to this game. It was noted by several people. The child himself asked NOT to play. The coach insisted. The player was a CHILD who felt he had to OBEY the adult coach. The coachs' bad judgement and choice NOT to listen are the direct cause. The coach had a legal as well as ethical amd moral obligation to put that CHILDS health and well-being before any and every other concern, even if it meant losing a game. I agree with Michaels post #3.2 whole heartedly! RyanNYC says that any person that steps on a football field accepts the risks. I hope you still feel that way if the same happens to any child of yours. The KEY WORD IS CHILD. This was not an NFL coach and player who are both adults.

the unions are taking care of them (nowadays) by keeping the wages so high. Players need to save that money responsibly considering most sports beat you into retirement at an early age. I don't have sympathy for today's broke ex-athletes any more than I did for mc hammmer when he pissed away his first 20 million dollars...

So,if a kid is having terrible headaches in class and requests to got to the nurses office and the teacher says no,and the child suffered permanent injury because of that that might have been prevented,the teacher is not responsible? There really is no difference here. If the coach had sent the child for medical care and it happened anyway,then yes,I would agree with you. If the coach had let the kid sit down for a while,and the kid thought he was ok,then I would still agree with you. Instead,he told him "suck it up" and made him keep playing and aggravated the injury.

Forget what the kid knew. He was just that,a kid. Lets talk parents and school staff. Parents let their child play,understanding there is a risk of injury. However,they expect the coach to be on top of things. They expect him to do his best to safeguard their children's well being. They know the coach welds authority over the kids and that he COULD potentially make them do things that were likely to result in injury. They expect him to be the responsible adult who makes sure the kids DONT do such things rather than pushing them into doing them. Usually this is the case. Often the coach for instance will tell a kid with an injured ankle not to play because the coach knows that if he does,he may cause permanent injury. This is not a case of a consenting adult taking a risk that didnt pay off. This is a case of a child being pressured into doing something that may have made a injury FAR worse rather than the responsible adult realizing that the pain was a symptom of a serious head injury and sending him to a hospital.

As the parent of a student athlete, I strongly disagree with you. I DO NOT expect the coach to be on top of things. I DO NOT expect him to be the responsible adult. I expect him to do what he is paid for, try to win games. As the parent, I expect ME to be on top of things. I expect ME to be the responsible adult.

In this article, the young man complained about headaches for a week. As the parent, the responsible adult, my child would have went to the doctor. An occasional headache is one thing, but for an entire week...no way. Then, a licensed, trained, medical professional could have made a diagnosis.

My son knows that I can, and will bench him for medical or academic reasons. If the coach has a problem with it, kick him off the team. Ultimately, I am the parent. I am the one responsible for this child's well-being.

I also strongly disagree with your comparison to a teacher not allowing a child to go to the nurse. This young man had headaches for a week...and his parents did nothing. This young man could have chosen to tell the coach no and walk off the field. This young man had parents who could have addressed this issue with the coach prior to the game.

I think that you sound like a widely growing population of parents right now. Everything bad that happens in my child's life is because of someone else. I don't want to be upset my child by telling coach I'm not allowing him to play. It's not my fault that Junior didn't get his homework done, the teacher shouldn't have assigned so much. It's not my fault that....I could go on. The bottom line is, the message that this sends to parents and students is that they don't have to accept any personal responsibility for their actions, because they can always blame it on someone else.

As the parent of a student athlete, I strongly disagree with you. I DO NOT expect the coach to be on top of things. I DO NOT expect him to be the responsible adult. I expect him to do what he is paid for, try to win games. As the parent, I expect ME to be on top of things. I expect ME to be the responsible adult.

Damn straight.

Thank you, teens mother. Finally, a responsible parent.

Bravo, teens mother, well stated. You sound exactly like my parents when I played sports.

You are not "parents" just because you are able procreate.

I was also a parent of kids in sports. The worse for injuries...hockey. If my kids were sick, hurt or complained of aches and pains, I made the decisions and took my kids to doctor when needed. There is no way a parent should not know their kid was having headaches.

I had to attend a parents meeting and was made aware of the chance for injuries and had to sign a waiver for them to play. That was my choice. Most of the coaches where I am DON"T get paid to coach. They do it because they love it. I totally agree with teens mother. Parents need to step up to the plate and take responsibilities and stop blaming the world. It was their choice to have children.

@Tess, Thanks for your post, but can you tell me why organized sports have to be in public schools in the first place? What do they do for the majority of students who don't participate, who sometimes must assemble in the gym to Ra-Ra-Ra?

Are sports a must in the course of your children's education, and, if so, please tell me why? Does it, or will it benefit their GPA when they are in college?

Most other western european countries focus on education and leave organized sports for after school and weekend events which have nothing to add to the importance of truly educating their young.

What if the a child does not tell their parents about headaches or any injuries? What if they are afraid their parents won't let them play? What if they have screwed up parents that will actually be upset if they don't play? The COACH is NOT paid to just WIN GAMES. IF thats what they think they should quit or be fired from the k-12 school system! They have the responsiblity of teaching safety, sportmanship,body mechanic, responsibility to themselves and their teammates etc.. The COACH is not EXEMPT from protecting the students from harm!!

When your child goes to the coach and flat out says I don't want to play because I am in pain, I have been having bad headaches. And when coach has already been told by another adult that this child has a problem. A reasonable adult would think the coach would then think, OK, maybe I should take what I've been told more than once, into consideration, have the kid sit out, and talk with the parents and suggest they see a Dr. When it's nobody fault it's a case like several that have made the news lately. EX: kids that have passed physical exams for sports, haven't shown any signs of illness, but drop dead in the middle of activity due to heart conditions nobody had any way of knowing existed.

I got an significant injury at a concert where some people fell on me and I didn't sue anyone. I understand what you are saying though.

Football is a tough sport. Like driving down the road we all take a risk, we could get paralyzed on the way to the grocery store. It's just life.

What I begrudge is the complete abdication of personal responsibility in the United States, the sense of entitlement most of my fellow Americans feel, the holding of others to standards most individuals feel no need to meet themselves, the expectation that life should be risk-free at other’s expense, and the costs to me for all of this.

If a 17 year old kid tells the adults in charge he has a headache while playing a sport with concussion risks, then the adults were at fault for pushing him back out there. The adults should know better and take precautions. Those adults are not the ones suffering the consequences of their neglect.

According to the article he complained to the athletic directer about headaches for a week before the game. I certainly feel for this young man but something could have been done then if headaches weren't something he had often or this one felt different or worse. Maybe his parents should have done something then. I know it's 20/20 hindsight. I have a nephew that plays college football and I'm damn proud but worry about him and injuries.

J. camp - Is the respiratory mask because you were somehow harmed and now must wear one? And your rant is to make yourself feel better about being such a self-perceived victim who tried to get as money for himself as he could?

There is nothing in this article that even suggests the fellow's medicals bills were not being paid. SO the BS leap to blaming not having a single payer health care system is just political psoturing. There are obviously a lot more details and facts not laid out here that should keep us from jumping to a conclusion one way or the other. The best point is having everyone take PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for their actions and the oout come of those actions. Parents need to teach and reinforce this with their children as we are thier PARENTS first and their friends second.

Plenty of insurance from the school district. Not to worry.

Reply madashell: Common sense is what suggests his medical bills wouldn't be paid. Lifetime care for a kid in this condition will run in the millions....and there is nothing in the article indicating that the parents have that kind of money either, is there?

And that's why the "personal responsibility" meme is irrelevant here....whether you think it is the kid, the parents or (as I do) the coach who bears the most "personal responsibility" here doesn't matter.. NONE of them is gonna be able to actually take full financial responsibility.

Either we kill the kid or someone else (school system, federal govt, whomever) must pay the medical bills. Putting aside the miniscule probability that the coach or family is already extremely wealthy those are literally the only options. And shouting "personal responsibility" doesn't change that.

oh Lord yes- just live in Texas- we even USED to have an attorney who had a commercial where he said "SO got YOUR check yet?" assuming-we are all entitled to some big insurance check (Texas has since done "some" tort reform)

We still have Jim Adler -The Texas Hammer- who only likes to do cases involving 18 wheelers.

This all speaks for itself.

may I quote : " CHA CHING! jackpot!!! $$$$$$$" "

Did you really just say having a kid in a wheelchair and unable to speak for the rest of his life constitutes "jackpot"? Seriously?

chaboard - No, getting $4.4 million for an accident does.

Wow, the young man is just go out a have a wild old time in his wheelchair. Go get drunk and get a tattoo maybe. Jump on a plane fly to vegas and go back married to a hooker or some other wild thing!!!

Seriously, over a lifetime he'll be lucky if it covers all his care. Much less affords him and his family any luxuries. 4.4 million really isn't that much when you need 24 hr care, multiple medical visits, therapists to keep your body parts from atrophy etc..

How much do you think it costs to equip a vehicle to haul a person in a wheelchair? build chair ramps? Modify a home to wheelchair access? Get the necessary medical equipment to get in/out of bed, shower, toliet etc.. IT's not cheap!!!!! How often do people with those types of problems become ill? Lot more frequently and seriously than most!!

Typically the lawyer get about 1/3 of the payout but can be higher.

Interesting point.

That's the answer, take sports out of high school. This generation is already a collection of wussies and Obama neophytes who think everyone owes them something. Maybe we can all go out Friday evening and watch the battle of marching bands...I get goose bumps just thinking about it. However, must be careful that little Johnny doesn't strain his lips on the tuba and his traumatize for life.

All that bitterness over an isolated incidence? Or is it the bond money? I cant tell?

no just a little angst over the fact that an inordinate amount of graduating seniors cannot even pass the GED here.

oh and I d feel sorry for this young man who is now incapacitated for lie. But is that the taxpayer's fault?Children go to school to get an education so they can go out into the world and make a living and become productive members of society. Playing sports for your high school will not matter worth a sh*t after graduation.That is alot of time and money wasted that could have been used teaching the skills needed for today's tough world. This young man won't even have a chance to do anything but talk with a pencil in his teeth. All because of -HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL.

Helmet to helmet is already gone.... in another 20 years it will be two-hand touch.

Sigh. A guy who can't even spell basic, easy words calling people stupid for trying to rest a serious head injury and being bullied by an authority figure into playing and suffering catastrophic injuries.

Welcome to America, where there is no personal responsibility. No oversight of your HS sports teams? No problem! You get off with no problems. Gross negligence? No problem! Anyone who sues is just a parasite!