Lawsuit Filed After Young Athlete Paralyzed

Los Angeles, CAA lawsuit has been filed after a 13-year-old athlete suffered a neck injury during a championship football game. The lawsuit alleges the boy’s neck injury was the result of a policy at Pop Warner Little Scholars that pushed football players into tackling headfirst. Although many back and neck injuries are associated with professional sports, such injuries can be devastating to young athletes.

According to Courthouse News Service (11/7/13), Donnovan Hill was enrolled at Pop Warner and was encouraged by his coaches to tackle headfirst, despite Pop Warner rules prohibiting it. The lawsuit alleges that Hill first injured his neck while running drills. Then, on November 6, 2011, Hill played in a championship game. He tackled a player using the headfirst technique and collapsed on the field. Hill is reportedly paralyzed from his chest down and has minimal use of his arms.

His lawsuit seeks punitive damages from Pop Warner for negligence, negligent training of coaches and negligent supervision.

Although the majority of catastrophic injuries linked to high school sports are thought of as occurring on the field of play, a report by the journal Pediatrics warns that for teenage girls, cheerleading is associated with a significant number of injuries.

“Although the overall injury rate remains relatively low, cheerleading has accounted for approximately 66% of all catastrophic injuries in high school girl athletes over the past 25 years,” the report notes. Part of the issue, according to the report’s authors, is that cheerleading is not recognized as a sport, which means it does not have the same safety resources and regulations as activities classified as sports.

This, combined with more complex routines, more children involved in cheerleading and other factors, has meant an increase in the number of injuries. The study notes that in 1980, there were 4,954 emergency room visits linked to cheerleading injuries, but by 2007, there were more than 26,000 visits. The majority of these involved the patient being treated and released, but in more than 200 cases, the patient was hospitalized.

Furthermore, the rate of catastrophic injuries linked to cheerleading rose from 1.5 per year from 1982 to 1992, to 2.8 per year from 2003 to 2009. And even though the majority of injuries involved the lower extremities, head and neck injuries accounted for 16 to 19 percent of injuries treated in hospital rooms.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that cheerleading be designated a sport so that it would receive the same safety benefits as other activities.