Crippled Super Bowl Champ Teams With Seau Family Against the NFL

Junior Seau never played with or against Otis Taylor in the National Football League, but the Chargers linebacker who committed suicide last May at age 43 is Taylor’s virtual teammate.

Both have joined a wider lawsuit against the NFL, according to court records and news reports. Seau once admitted trying to kill himself in Carlsbad in 2010, said a more recent report.

Taylor, now 70 and living in Raytown, MO, “is currently bedridden, cannot verbally communicate, is unable to walk and relies on a feeding tube for all of his sustenance,” according to a lawsuit filed with his wife, Regina.

An All-AFL receiver with the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs in the mid-1960s and All-NFL in 1971-72, Taylor retired in 1975—when Seau was 6.

But lawsuits on behalf of both say the NFL was to blame for their damaged lives—or death.

“Taylor first suffered seizures in 1969 while he played professional football,” said his suit, filed in December. “Later, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and dementia in 1990.”

The suit said Taylor, like Seau, suffered “multiple repetitive traumatic head impacts, subconcussive and concussive injuries” during practices and games—“none of which were ever acknowledged or treated by any health care professional.”

The Taylors seek a court-supervised, NFL-funded medical monitoring program “that will facilitate, treat, diagnosis and care for Plaintiff Otis Taylor for the rest of his life, limited though it may be.”

In January, the Seau family sued the NFL and other parties for wrongful death.

Two Seau-related suits, along with Taylor’s and a larger one involving many others, have been consolidated with NFL concussion litigation in Philadelphia.

The Associated Press reports that a key hearing in the case is set for April 9, “when lawyers for thousands of former players will try to keep the issue in federal court. The NFL wants the claims heard in arbitration.”

U.S. District Judge Anita Brody in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania will hear the combined case.

According to The Pennsylvania Record, a legal newspaper, “The multi-district litigation, which now comprises more than 4,100 individual plaintiffs, is scheduled to have its first oral arguments in just one week’s time, when both sides address the NFL’s motion to dismiss based on the league’s contention that the plaintiffs’ claims are pre-empted by the collective bargaining agreement.”