DALLAS — A Dallas state court ruled Friday that a former University of Texas football player’s lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association will remain in Dallas despite the NCAA’s efforts to move the case to Travis County.
During a hearing before Dallas District Judge D’Metria Benson on Friday morning, the NCAA’s lawyers argued that the case, which involves negligence allegations against the association tied to catastrophic head injuries, should be moved to Austin because a majority of the events would have taken place on UT’s campus.
After hearing arguments for a half hour, Judge Benson initially told the parties to spend the next 30 days conducting discovery on where the NCAA, which is based in Indiana, primarily did its business in Texas at the time of the events surrounding the case, which was in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
But several minutes later, she changed her mind and decided to deny NCAA’s motion.
NCAA’s lawyers were not immediately available for comment on the ruling.
“We are pleased with the court’s ruling, which was certainly supported by both the law and the facts of the case, and are ready to now move forward with the merits of the case,” Houston attorney Eugene Egdorf, who represents the plaintiffs, told The Texas Lawbook in an email.
The plaintiff, Robert E. Callison, was a running back for the Texas Longhorns in 1968, 1969 and 1971. As a result of the many blows to the head he suffered during his collegiate football career, Callison argues that he now suffers permanent brain damage, including memory loss, confusion, depression, aggressive behavior and psychotic episodes. In recent years he has been diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and he lost his job in 2015 as a truck driver because his symptoms worsened.
Callison and his wife, Mary Diane Callison, sued the NCAA last summer. The lawsuit alleges that the NCAA failed to protect Callison by not taking appropriate measures to educate collegiate players and coaches about the risk of head trauma in football or try to mitigate the situation.
The plaintiffs argue the NCAA failed to be proactive despite likely knowing at the time about the long-term dangers of concussions and sub-concussive blows to the head regularly suffered by football players. They argue the NCAA knew or “should have known” about the risks which were public knowledge as early as 1901, thanks to numerous scientific and medical reports. Moreover, the NCAA had language in its very own bylaws, handbooks and public statements addressing the risks associated with head traumas and the appropriate measures to take when one occurs, the lawsuit says.
The plaintiffs’ legal team had argued that Dallas County is the appropriate venue because Callison may have suffered concussions and “did suffer repeated sub-concussive” head blows during multiple football games he played in Dallas’ Cotton Bowl, including against the University of Tennessee, Notre Dame, Pennsylvania State, Southern Methodist University (twice) and the University of Oklahoma.
They also argued that during Callison’s playing days, the NCAA conducted significant business and association activities in Dallas through the Southwest Conference, which was headquartered there, and that the NCAA continues to do so today through association-governed sporting events at the American Airlines Center, the Cotton Bowl Stadium and SMU’s campus.
At Friday’s hearing, NCAA lawyer Victor Vital had argued that the law would say Dallas is the improper venue because an “insubstantial part of the whole picture” of facts took place in Dallas. He said only a handful of the collegiate games Callison played in took place in Dallas compared to more than 250 practices conducted in Austin in which blocking and tackling occurred — i.e., where the opportunity for head injury was greater.
He also argued that in addition to his client, the plaintiffs’ home base is not in Dallas — it’s in Montgomery County.
“You have to look at the whole picture and see what proportion for what part of the whole that venue (Dallas) played here. And here, the venue played a small slice in that big picture,” Vital, a partner at Barnes & Thornburg, said at the hearing.
Egdorf countered that Callison’s neurologist expert, Dr. David Cantu, concluded that the games in Dallas played a substantial role in Callison’s head injuries. Plus, the law is not on the NCAA’s side, Egdorf added.
“[The NCAA is] arguing which venue would be predominant,” Egdorf, who practices at Shrader & Associates, said at the hearing. “That’s not the law. The question is whether this one is proper. There can be 10 venues in a case, there can be 73… The NCAA is actually considered a citizen of every state and every county in which it is set up.”
Egdorf also represented Debra Ploetz, the widow of Gregory Ploetz, one of Callison’s teammates at UT. Mrs. Ploetz sued the NCAA on similar allegations, and the litigation settled in the middle of a 2018 trial in then-Dallas District Judge Ken Molberg’s court.
Egdorf brought up the previous matter at Friday’s hearing and pointed out that Justice Molberg (who now serves on the Dallas Fifth Court of Appeals) denied the NCAA’s motion to transfer venue and kept the case in Dallas until its resolution.
Also representing the Callisons are Egdorf’s Shrader & Associates colleagues Justin Shrader, Alex Barlow and James Hartle. Lisa Blue is local counsel for the plaintiffs.
NCAA’s legal team also includes Benjamin Pedroff of Barnes & Thornburg.