Widow asks $55M from NCAA for ex-USC football player's death
An attorney for the widow of a former University of Southern California football player has asked a jury to award her more than $50 million in a lawsuit accusing the NCAA with failing to protect her husband from repetitive head trauma
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Attorneys asked a jury Monday to award $55 million to the widow of a former USC football player, in a landmark case accusing the NCAA of failing to protect him from repetitive head trauma that led to his death.
Matthew Gee, a hard-hitting linebacker who was on the 1990 Rose Bowl-winning squad, endured countless blows that caused permanent brain damage and led to cocaine and alcohol abuse that eventually killed him at age 49, his lawyers said in closing arguments.
In the first case of its kind to go to a jury, the attorneys in told Los Angeles Superior Court jurors that the NCAA, the governing body of college athletics in the U.S., had known about effects of head trauma in sports since the 1930s but failed for decades to notify players of the risks or put rules in place to protect players.
“You cannot bring Matt back but you can say what the NCAA did to him was wrong,” attorney Bill Horton said. “Put this on the NCAA's radar. ... This is the only way they will ever listen.”
