Brett Romberg Kept His Suit Against NFL Even After Re-Signing With Falcons Last Year

Former Dolphins quarterback Pat White wisely dismissed his concussion lawsuit (actually, he filed two of them) before returning to the NFL, signing with the Redskins.  But maybe he didn’t need to do that.  After all, two other players made comebacks without scrapping their own lawsuits against the league.

A league source advises that former Jaguars, Rams, and Falcons center Brett Romberg, a plaintiff in one of the original concussion lawsuits filed in July 2011, re-signed with the Falcons the following month, after a year out of football.

Cut in early September 2011, Romberg again re-signed with the Falcons later that month, remaining with the team for the balance of the year and appearing in two games.

We’ve also confirmed, as first reported by Nathan Fenno of the Washington Times, that defensive end Patrick Chukwurah signed with the Seahawks last season after filing suit for concussions suffered earlier in his career.

While not binding on the many other former players who have sued, this dynamic supports the notion that plenty of the concussion plaintiffs view the litigation as a lawyer-driven strategy for finagling a little extra money from a former employer, and that many of the players would welcome the chance to make more money playing football despite the brain damage they’ve supposedly sustained.

As Ross Tucker aptly put it earlier today on Twitter, “Pat White situation makes me wonder how many guys on concussion lawsuit would bail if a team offered them contract?”  We know Pat White would, because Pat White did.  Despite allegedly permanent injuries, White was perfectly fine when he had to be.
Even though that’s only one out of 4,000 plaintiffs, it does far more damage to the concussion lawsuits than any permanent harm White ever suffered in the NFL.

Especially since we now know that he actually suffered none.


(profootballweekly.com)