An Ohio dad suing football-helmet maker Riddell over his son’s death from apparent football-related brain injuries has been given the green light to proceed to trial.
On Tuesday, an Ohio judge ruled that Riddell will have to face off against Darren Hamblin’s claims that the company’s helmets are responsible for his son’s untimely death after a decade of playing tackle football, starting at the age of 8.
Hamblin’s son, Cody Hamblin, died in 2016 — five years after his high school football career ended — from a seizure while fishing with his grandfather, which caused him to fall off the boat and drown.
An autopsy later revealed that the former Miamisburg High School football star suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a neurological injury associated with football that can only be detected after death, court papers show.
A judge on Tuesday OK’d five out of six of Hamblin’s claims against Riddell, including wrongful death and design and manufacturing defects, according to the ruling filed in Ohio’s Court of Common Pleas in Montgomery County. The one claim tossed by the judge was for fraud.
It’s a huge win for Hamblin, who has spent the last year fending off Riddell’s motions to dismiss his lawsuit, which has been described as a “bizarre test case” because it involves an amateur football player — not a professional.
“I think this ruling is also precedent-setting because we are looking at injuries that occurred far earlier than we had ever thought they were occurring,” Hamblin’s lawyer, Bob Finnerty from the firm of Girardi Keese firm, told The Post about Cody, who died at 22 years of age.
“I think the argument being made is that there is no number of safe hits the brain can withstand,” Finnerty said.
Riddell’s lawyers and its private equity owner Fenway Partners did not return calls for comment.
The helmet maker is a unit of BRG Sports, a privately held sporting equipment company that has also been fighting lawsuits filed by former NFL players who have claimed that the helmet maker failed to protect them from brain injuries. That lawsuit has been held up in Philadelphia federal court as the plaintiffs seek to move it to California.
Separately, the NFL in 2015 agreed to settle its legal battle with players over head injuries for an estimated $1 billion in a deal that is still being hashed out.
Finnerty said the win marks the first CTE case against Riddell that has reached the discovery stage, which is when the company must turn over documents and other potential evidence. The lawsuit, filed last year, does not specify damages, and Finnerty declined to comment on how much the case could fetch if it prevails at trial or is settled beforehand.
Hamblin contributed a chapter about his son’s death to the 2019 book “Brain Damaged: Two-Minute Warning for Parents,” intended to educate parents about the risks of contact sports like football. In the book, he talks about a conversation he had with another parent warning him about the risks of football.
“A friend that I went to school with at West Carrollton, his son played on Cody’s third-grade team. He came up to me one day and said, ‘You might not believe what I’m about to tell you because Cody’s in such good shape, and he’s such a good athlete. But it’s not good for a kid to play as many plays as he does. I played football and baseball in college, and I’m telling you, if a kid plays as much as he does it could cause some injury,'” Hamblin wrote of his son’s arduous training schedule.
“I didn’t know what to say, because I was never in this situation,” Hamblin wrote. “I just told Cody, ‘If you ever want to take a break, make sure you tell the coach.’ He said he would, but he never feels like he needs a break! That conversation now haunts me!”