Verdict Videos produced a Settlement Video highlighting the liability and damages for Scott Eveland. We incorporated interviews of the treating surgeon, Scott’s mother and step-father, game day footage, and witness deposition testimony. We also incorporated pre-injury photos and day in the life footage.
Scott Eveland, who suffered a debilitating brain injury during a high school football game, will receive $4.375 million before attorney fees and other costs from the San Marcos Unified School District to settle a lawsuit filed almost four years ago.
A $500,000 settlement reached several months ago from a helmet manufacturer brings the total to just under $5 million.
The San Marcos Unified settlement was finalized in Vista Superior Court Friday and brings to an end a marathon legal case.
The money is far less than court papers indicated Eveland’s attorney once estimated would be needed to provide Eveland the type of care he will need the rest of his life. That number, perhaps inflated, was in the $25 million range.
Now 22, Eveland was a 17-year-old linebacker for Mission Hills High School in San Marcos when he collapsed on the sideline during a game Sept. 14, 2007.
The bleeding inside Eveland’s brain caused extensive damage, and he requires constant care.
For the past 18 months Eveland’s lawyers have argued that the injury was a result of a coach ignoring warning signs exhibited by Eveland of head injury and played him against his athletic trainer’s advice.
The attorneys in the case issued a joint written statement following the brief hearing before Judge Thomas Nugent. The statement reads in part:
“All parties agree that this settlement presents a compromise that is in the best interests of Scott Eveland. The money paid in this settlement will assist Scott in obtaining future medical care and treatment which has been the long time concern of the San Marcos Unified School District and the San Marcos community.
“Scott Eveland and his family agree that this settlement does not suggest that the professional and hard working coaches, athletic trainers, administrators and staff of the Mission Hills High School intentionally contributed too the unfortunate and tragic accident that occurred during a high-school football game.”
Judge Nugent, who has presided over the case since 2008, said he was glad the compromise had been reached.
“I understand we have some good news in this case, if there can be good news,” he said. “I suppose you could make the argument that there can’t be good news.”
Following the hearing, Eveland’s lead attorney, Robert Francavilla, declined to comment on details of the case, choosing to only say that Eveland and his family are glad to have it behind them and are prepared to move forward.
The lawsuit originally focused on what Eveland’s lawyers said was a delay in transporting him to the hospital from the game. That theory dissolved in the face of evidence.
The case took a radical shift in late 2010 when a student trainer who had been on the football field that night testified under oath during a deposition that Eveland said he had been suffering headaches during the week leading up to the game.
Then the bombshell was delivered by student trainer Breanna Bingen: just minutes before the game was to begin she said that Eveland went to the team’s athletic trainer, Scott Gommel, and asked to sit out the first quarter. He said his headache was so bad that he couldn’t even focus his eyes, Bingen said.
Gommel then went to Coach Chris Hauser. Bingen said she overhead Hauser screaming at Gommel.
“He said that Scotty was his (expletive) football player and that if he wanted to put Scotty in the game, he was going to damn well put him in the game. …. You’re not a (expletive) doctor,” Bingen testified.
Then last year at least two more witnesses came forward and testified that in the days after Eveland’s collapse they had spoken to Gommel who had told them essentially the same story.
Both Gommel and Hauser denied during their depositions that the conversations had ever taken place and said they had no idea Eveland had been suffering symptoms of a previous head injury, if he had.
Eveland started the game and collapsed during the first half. His life was saved in surgery later that night, but he is severely disabled. His mind is alert but his body is crippled.
Eveland’s mother, Diane Luth, and stepfather, Paul Luth, attended the hearing Friday but asked not to be interviewed. Francavilla, their attorney, said Eveland’s health is improving and that recently he completed the requirements to get his high school diploma.
He said two years ago it would take three or four people to help Eveland to a standing position, now it takes one or two people. He can communicate via an iPad or keyboard if someone is supporting his arm.
More than 250 depositions, more than any Eveland’s co-counsel David Casey Jr. said he has ever heard of in such a case, were taken during the litigation.
After numerous continuances, a trial was set to begin in January, but suddenly the case fell into limbo as attorneys conferred. Talks involved both sides, as well as attorneys for the county’s Office of Education, which oversees a Joint Powers Authority that insures school districts, and attorneys for the Everest National Insurance Co., the office of education’s excess liability carrier for the case.
Terms of the settlement were agreed upon last week.