Cyril V. Smith

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Cyril V. Smith
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Born (1960-08-04) August 4, 1960 (age 63)
Boston, Massachusetts
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Virginia School of Law
OccupationLawyer

Cyril V. (Cy) Smith (born August 4, 1960) is an American lawyer. He is best known for his leading role in establishing the National Football League (NFL)'s legal liability for brain injuries caused by repeated concussions from playing American football, and later for exposing the use of racially-based payment schemes for retired American football players injured by concussions[1][2].

Early Life

Smith was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Alexandria, Virginia. He attended Groveton and George C. Marshall High Schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, where he led their debate teams, graduating in 1977. He then went on to earn his B.A. in government from Dartmouth College in 1981. While attending Dartmouth, Smith was a Sigurd Larmon Scholar and Rufus Choate Scholar, recipient of the Chase Peace Prize, and ranked first nationally for intercollegiate debate, 1980–1981.

Professional Career

After graduating from the University of Virginia School of Law with his J.D. in 1986, Smith began his career at the law firm of Dickstein Shapiro LLP (formerly Dickstein, Shapiro, Morin & Oshinsky[3]) in Washington, D.C. In 1990, he and his wife, Adina Amith, moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he joined the law firm Zuckerman Spaeder LLP[4] and became a partner in 1994.

Smith began work on NFL matters in 2004, when he filed a lawsuit for the estate of Michael "Mike" Webster, a former player for the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs, who had died in 2002[5]. The lawsuit against the NFL's pension plan alleged that Webster's repeated concussions from playing American pro football had caused multiple brain injuries and ultimately led to Webster's total disability and inability to work after his retirement from football in 1991.

In 2005, the federal trial court in Baltimore, found in favor of Webster's estate, ruling that the estate was entitled to more than $1 million in unpaid disability pension benefits because Webster's concussions were the direct cause of his disability[6]. In 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia upheld that finding. These legal rulings were the first to draw a direct link[7] between American football and brain injuries leading to disability and dementia, as well as the first legal judgments of any kind against the NFL's pension plan[8]. A later legal case by Smith, representing retired American football player Jesse Solomon, drew the further link between football and the disease known as [Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE. Smith testified before the U.S. Congress in 2007 about the Webster case and its implications[9].

The resulting focus on football and concussions at the pro, college, and amateur levels in America caused the NFL and other football leagues ultimately to acknowledge the significance of football-caused brain injuries and to adopt rules changes aimed at decreasing the number of concussions, although the effect of those changes has yet to be proven. (Other pro and amateur sports leagues, such as ice hockey[10], also adopted rules changes and concussion-identification protocols.) It also precipitated a class action lawsuit against the NFL and others based on retired players' concussion-related injuries, and then to a settlement of that lawsuit, which required the NFL, beginning in 2017, to make compensation payments to retired players based on the severity of their mental impairments.

This compensation scheme, known as the NFL Concussion Settlement[11], led to Smith's role in exposing the use of race-based standards for evaluating players' settlement claims. The NFL Concussion Settlement based its payments on players' loss in cognitive ability compared to "norms" on neuropsychological tests adjusted for several factors, including whether the player was Black or White (some 70% of pro football players are Black[12]). The norms, in turn, assumed that Blacks started with lower cognitive ability than Whites, so that White players were presumed to have lost more cognitive ability than their Black teammates[13].

In a 2020 lawsuit against the NFL, Smith, Justin Wyatt of J.R. Wyatt Law,[14] and Edward Stone of Edward Stone Law[15] challenged the use of this "race norming" technique, arguing that it placed Black players at a distinct disadvantage in applying for and receiving Settlement benefits. The lawsuit led in 2022 to comprehensive changes[16] in the NFL Concussion Settlement[17], eliminating the use of race-norming and giving Black players the chance to receive benefits under race-neutral standards[18]. The public exposure of the race-norming practice has contributed to a reconsideration of race-based standards of care and evaluation across American health care, including in the evaluation of kidney disease and obstetrics[19].

Beyond sports-related cases, Smith has represented other individuals in high-stakes cases, including the son of real estate mogul and corporate raider Victor Posner in a multimillion-dollar settlement in one of the largest will contests in U.S. history[20] and an accountant in the Manila office of a global construction firm, who was kidnapped and tortured after the employer refused to pay his ransom or permit his family to do so.

Smith was selected by the Alabama federal district court to serve on the five-person Plaintiffs' Steering Committee in the consolidated national class action antitrust proceedings against the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurers, directing the litigation on behalf of health insurance subscribers[21][22]. The settlement in that case, which received final approval in 2022[23] and was affirmed on appeal in 2023[24], requires the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurers to pay $2.67 billion to insureds and to undertake sweeping changes in the ways the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurers compete in the national health insurance market[25].

Awards and honors

  • Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business, Litigation: General Commercial (Maryland)[26]
  • Law360 Benefits MVP of the Year (2022)[27]
  • The National Law Journal, Plaintiffs' Lawyer Trailblazer (2017)[28]
  • The Daily Record, Leadership in Law Award (2009)[29]

References

  1. ↑ Jacobs, Danny (2011-01-03). "'Relentless' lawyer, Cy Smith, takes on the NFL". Maryland Daily Record. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  2. ↑ "Expert Perspectives on Biggest Court Cases". Litigation Daily | The American Lawyer. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  3. ↑ "Morin & Oshinsky" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-10-29. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  4. ↑ https://www.zuckerman.com
  5. ↑ "Tackled For A Loss - CBS News". www.cbsnews.com. 2009-11-11. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  6. ↑ Laskas, Jeanne Marie (2015-12-02). "The Brain That Sparked the NFL's Concussion Crisis". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  7. ↑ "BU Researchers Find CTE in 99% of Former NFL Players Studied". Boston University. 2017-07-26. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  8. ↑ Sep. 04, Meryl GordonUpdated; 2019 (2015-12-23). "Before 'Concussion': An Inside Glimpse of NFL Player Mike Webster's Utterly Tragic Final Days". The Healthy. Retrieved 2024-01-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  9. ↑ "- NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE'S SYSTEM FOR COMPENSATING RETIRED PLAYERS: AN UNEVEN PLAYING FIELD?". www.govinfo.gov. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  10. ↑ "NHL empowers spotters to identify players with concussions, pull them from game". Los Angeles Times. 2016-10-12. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  11. ↑ "NFL Concussion Settlement". www.nflconcussionsettlement.com. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  12. ↑ Carter, Tracie Canada, Chelsey R. "The NFL's Racist 'Race Norming' Is an Afterlife of Slavery". Scientific American. Retrieved 2024-01-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ↑ "How 'race-norming' was built into the NFL concussion settlement". Washington Post. 2021-08-02. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  14. ↑ https://jrwyattlaw.com/
  15. ↑ https://edwardstonelaw.com/
  16. ↑ "Judge approves fix to stem race bias in NFL concussion deal". NFL.com.
  17. ↑ Belson, Ken (Aug 12, 2022). "More Black Former N.F.L. Players Eligible for Concussion Payouts". The New York Times.
  18. ↑ "Expert Perspectives on Biggest Court Cases". Litigation Daily | The American Lawyer. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  19. ↑ Cineas, Fabiola (2021-07-09). ""Race norming" and the long legacy of medical racism, explained". Vox. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  20. ↑ admin (2003-10-17). "Will settlement puts Posners back in spotlight (72839)". Maryland Daily Record. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  21. ↑ "MDL-2406_0061_01.pdf" (PDF). April 26, 2013.
  22. ↑ "The Architect of the Massive Antitrust Case Against Blue Cross Blue Shield". Lawdragon. 2022-11-23. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  23. ↑ Mathews, Anna Wilde (2022-08-09). "Judge Approves Blue Cross's $2.67 Billion Antitrust Settlement". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  24. ↑ "Court upholds $2.7 billion Blue Cross antitrust settlement". Healthcare Finance News. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  25. ↑ Scarcella, Mike (October 25, 2023). "$2.7 bln Blue Cross antitrust settlement upheld by US appeals court".
  26. ↑ "Cyril Smith". chambers.com. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  27. ↑ "MVP: Zuckerman Spaeder's Cyril Smith - Law360". www.law360.com. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  28. ↑ "NLJ 2017 Plaintiff's Lawyers Trailblazers". pdfserver.amlaw.com. Retrieved 2024-01-11.
  29. ↑ "2009 Winners". Maryland Daily Record. Retrieved 2024-01-11.

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