A former Penn State football player has disavowed a class-action head injury lawsuit filed Tuesday in the Northern District of Illinois against Penn State, the NCAA and Big Ten Conference.
Eric Ravotti, a former standout at Freeport High and head football coach at Fox Chapel, is seeking to have his case dismissed with prejudice, according to court documents, meaning it is permanently closed and cannot be brought back to court.
Ravotti, of Richland, said an attorney contacted him Sunday after finding his name on a list of players who were part of NFL litigation involving concussions. Ravotti said he told the attorney he wasn’t interested in taking part and didn’t realize until Tuesday night that he, along with two other former Penn State football players, was a plaintiff.
James Boyd, who was a safety for Penn State from 1997-2001, was removed from the suit shortly after Tuesday’s filing. Robert Samuels, a defensive back from 1988-89, is the other plaintiff listed on the suit with Ravotti.
“An attorney had filed a claim with my name on it with no authorization, nothing in any way, shape or form, to give him the right to do so,” Ravotti said Wednesday afternoon. “And not only did he do that, the claims that were in that, which I’m dealing with now with friends and family, make statements about cognitive impairments that are not true about me.”
Court documents said Ravotti, a four-year starter at linebacker for the Nittany Lions from 1990 to 1994, endures “deficits in cognitive functioning, reduced processing speed, decline in attention and reasoning, loss of memory, sleeplessness and mood swings” as a result of concussions while playing at Penn State.
In a statement released early Wednesday, Ravotti, who played for the Steelers for three seasons, called those claims “utterly ridiculous.”
Chicago-based attorney Jay Edelson of Edelson PC, the law firm that filed the suits, said in a statement Wednesday he was “troubled to hear reports that Mr. Ravotti and Mr. Boyd suggested that they were unaware that we were including Penn State in the class action lawsuit we filed over concussion related symptoms. Our team would, of course, never file a lawsuit without a very clear understanding that our clients saw any proposed complaint, understood our strategy and wished to undertake the solemn duties required to lead a case of this magnitude.”
The statement also said Edelson cannot share any more specific details about the firm’s communication with the two former Nittany Lions in order to honor the attorney-client relationship.
“We will say more generally that we know that suing institutions as powerful as the NCAA and its member institutions is not an easy task,” Edelson said. “Mr. Ravotti and Mr. Boyd have indicated that they do not wish to lead that fight.”
The suit was part of six class-action lawsuits brought Tuesday against the NCAA and various universities and athletic conferences. Penn State and Vanderbilt were the only two schools individually named in the suits, as state laws protect the other universities from being sued. Former players from Utah, Oregon, Georgia and Auburn are suing their respective athletic conferences and the NCAA, according to CBS Sports.
“We have not yet reviewed the complaint and thus do not have a comment at this time,” Penn State Athletics said in a statement. The Office of General Counsel will review the complaint, a spokesman with the athletic department said.
A Big Ten spokesman had no comment.
While Ravotti said he experienced about four or five concussions while playing for Penn State, he always felt the team took good care of him.
“The thought [of a lawsuit] had never even crossed my mind. In fact, it sickens me to even think that somebody would try to point fingers at Penn State for something when their medical program was second to none,” Ravotti said. “The whole thing has been an absolute nightmare.”
First Published: May 18, 2016, 5:05 p.m.
Updated: May 18, 2016, 11:01 p.m.
