In this day and age of multimillion dollar pro athletes, little thought is given to workers compensation benefits for injuries sustained by lesser paid sportsmen and sportswomen. Having represented professional athletes, both Doug Landau and his father Norman Landau have seen what sports injuries can to to promising athletic careers.

Sports injury lawyer Doug Landau recently came across interesting news stories on workers’ compensation for football players filing claims in California. The reason the disabled players filed on the West Coast is that California has a very long time limit to bring such claims, unlike many states on the East Coast. Under a provision of the California Workers’ Compensation Law there is an unusually long statute of limitations and a broad jurisdictional basis that will allow a claim to go forward even if only one game was played in a California for an entire career.

About 700 former N.F.L. players are pursuing cases in California with most of them in line to receive routine lump-sum settlements of about $100,000 to $200,000. These claims have focused on primarily orthopedic injuries, with torn shoulders and ravaged knees obvious casualties of the players’ former workplace. In tomorrow’s post, we will look at how the nature of these comp claims are changing in light of evidence of brain injury and head trauma in the NFL.