When Travis Kelce, the star tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, suffered a non-contact lower leg injury during their recent victory against the Minnesota Vikings, the current clamor for the NFL to ban the use of artificial turf reached new heights when Travis’ brother, Philadelphia Eagles star center Jason Kelce, demanded that changes be made. Even though Travis Kelce's injury did not sideline him for the most recent game in Denver, the uproar surrounding this demand has been growing since Aaron Rodgers, QB of the New York Jets, sustained a devastating opening night torn Achilles tendon and is likely out for the season. The economic ripple effect of this one injury is unquestionably massive.
Whether the artificial turf at the Vikings' and Jets' home fields directly caused these injuries (Rodgers' own coach disputes that it did), the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) has leveraged these superstar injuries to intensify its plea to the league for the adoption of natural grass surfaces, which it claims is essential.
Critics have suggested that substantial changes to the league's stance on safety issues only comes when the threat of litigation looms large. A turf lawsuit would not be the first time that players or former players have sued the NFL over safety and related injuries. Perhaps most notably, in 2012, more than 4,500 retired players collectively filed a class-action lawsuit against the NFL, alleging negligence in safeguarding athletes from head injuries caused by impacts on the field. The NFL settled that case for $765 million dollars with a total of eventually over 18,000 former players.
For NFL players to bring a negligence claim, they would have to allege that 1) the league owed them a duty of some level of safety from known dangers, and 2) that the league breached that duty by not taking action to prevent injuries stemming from those known dangers. Perhaps critical to the success of the concussion lawsuit however were the allegations that the league knew of the long-term consequences of such head impacts, including conditions like CTE and Parkinson's disease, but had deliberately concealed the information from athletes.
The importance of these concealment allegations is two-fold. Initially, the legal duty that the league owes to the athletes increases dramatically if they conceal information that results in harm. Though the law often doesn’t recognize general safety duties, that can change where a defendant conceals a danger. The second issue with concealment involves the league’s expected defense that players have assumed the risk of such injuries by playing the game. Though this is a hard argument for the league to make if they have concealed the information needed to actually “assume the risk”, the defense may be successful where the athletes are well aware of the dangers but choose this line of work anyway.
Where the NFLPA has been sounding the alarm for years about the perils of artificial turf and citing studies on the subject, alleging concealment of these dangers seems as unlikely as Taylor Swift still going to Chiefs’ games at the end of the year.
In conclusion, there is serious doubt in turning those studies into good claims for the players. In the end, where the league and owners are predictably motivated by the dollar signs, perhaps having these two superstars sidelined is the only play the NFLPA needs. The Jets' plummet from primetime to fighting for last place may pack more punch than any lawyer's closing statement in this gridiron drama.
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