SAN MARCOS: Judge says Eveland suit can move
forward
By TERI FIGUEROA
North County Times - The Californian
April 12, 2011
The lawsuit filed by the family of Scott Eveland, a San Marcos high school senior who
collapsed during a school football game, survived its biggest challenge yet when a
Vista-based judge this week rejected a bid by the defendants to dismiss the suit.
Eveland, now 21, was 17 when he collapsed during a Mission Hills High School
varsity football game on Sept. 14, 2007, after suffering a traumatic brain injury. He
remains severely disabled.
His family sued a number of entities, but more than three years after the suit was
filed, the only two defendants who remain are the school district and the maker of the
football helmet Eveland wore.
Last year, the two defendants had asked San Diego Superior Court Judge Thomas
Nugent to dismiss the allegations they faced.
On Monday, Nugent rejected that request to dismiss the case. In his ruling,
Nugent cited explosive testimony from a student trainer who came forward
three years after the collapse that left Eveland with severe brain damage.
Last October, the student testified in a deposition that she had overheard
Eveland complain of headaches, and said she heard Eveland ask one of the
trainers if he could sit out the first quarter of the game because he was
having headaches and "couldn't see the football well enough."
The former student trainer, Brianna Bingen, also said she heard the trainer, Scott
Gommel, bring it up to head coach Chris Hauser, but said she heard Hauser yell that
"Scotty was his (expletive) football player and if he wanted to put Scotty in the game
he was going to damn well put him in the game."
Eveland staggered off the football field early in the second quarter during a game at
Mission Hills High School and collapsed on the sidelines. Before the game was over,
Eveland lay on an operating table, his skull cap removed as doctors battled to save
his life.
In his ruling, Nugent said that it was "a triable issue of fact" ---- in other words, it's for
a jury to decide ---- as to "whether the district's employees had notice of the plaintiff's
headaches and kept him in the game regardless of those headaches."
Attorney Gil Abed, who represents the school district, said he had not received and
read the ruling Tuesday and declined to comment.
Bingen's account of what she said she overheard on the sidelines comes in contrast
to statements from school officials who said none of them were aware that Eveland
might have been suffering medical problems when he stepped on to the field that
night.
Her words also changed the main focus of the lawsuit, which earlier had been
centered more on the 15 or so minutes it took to get Eveland in an ambulance and
headed to the hospital following his collapse.
Jury trial in the case has been scheduled to start July 15.
forward
By TERI FIGUEROA
North County Times - The Californian
April 12, 2011
The lawsuit filed by the family of Scott Eveland, a San Marcos high school senior who
collapsed during a school football game, survived its biggest challenge yet when a
Vista-based judge this week rejected a bid by the defendants to dismiss the suit.
Eveland, now 21, was 17 when he collapsed during a Mission Hills High School
varsity football game on Sept. 14, 2007, after suffering a traumatic brain injury. He
remains severely disabled.
His family sued a number of entities, but more than three years after the suit was
filed, the only two defendants who remain are the school district and the maker of the
football helmet Eveland wore.
Last year, the two defendants had asked San Diego Superior Court Judge Thomas
Nugent to dismiss the allegations they faced.
On Monday, Nugent rejected that request to dismiss the case. In his ruling,
Nugent cited explosive testimony from a student trainer who came forward
three years after the collapse that left Eveland with severe brain damage.
Last October, the student testified in a deposition that she had overheard
Eveland complain of headaches, and said she heard Eveland ask one of the
trainers if he could sit out the first quarter of the game because he was
having headaches and "couldn't see the football well enough."
The former student trainer, Brianna Bingen, also said she heard the trainer, Scott
Gommel, bring it up to head coach Chris Hauser, but said she heard Hauser yell that
"Scotty was his (expletive) football player and if he wanted to put Scotty in the game
he was going to damn well put him in the game."
Eveland staggered off the football field early in the second quarter during a game at
Mission Hills High School and collapsed on the sidelines. Before the game was over,
Eveland lay on an operating table, his skull cap removed as doctors battled to save
his life.
In his ruling, Nugent said that it was "a triable issue of fact" ---- in other words, it's for
a jury to decide ---- as to "whether the district's employees had notice of the plaintiff's
headaches and kept him in the game regardless of those headaches."
Attorney Gil Abed, who represents the school district, said he had not received and
read the ruling Tuesday and declined to comment.
Bingen's account of what she said she overheard on the sidelines comes in contrast
to statements from school officials who said none of them were aware that Eveland
might have been suffering medical problems when he stepped on to the field that
night.
Her words also changed the main focus of the lawsuit, which earlier had been
centered more on the 15 or so minutes it took to get Eveland in an ambulance and
headed to the hospital following his collapse.
Jury trial in the case has been scheduled to start July 15.
Why This Website
Stutz Artiano Shinoff
& Holtz v. Maura
Larkins defamation
SDCOE
CVESD
Castle Park
Elementary School
Law Enforcement
CTA
CVE
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& Holtz
Silence is Golden
Schools and Violence
Office Admin Hearings
Larkins OAH Hearing
Stutz Artiano Shinoff
& Holtz v. Maura
Larkins defamation
SDCOE
CVESD
Castle Park
Elementary School
Law Enforcement
CTA
CVE
Stutz Artiano Shinoff
& Holtz
Silence is Golden
Schools and Violence
Office Admin Hearings
Larkins OAH Hearing
There's more on the line than money in brain-
damaged football player's lawsuit
By Logan Jenkins
SDUT
April 19, 2011
My biggest fear about Eveland vs. San Marcos Unified School District is that the
lawsuit will be settled without a full accounting before a jury.
I know. I sound naive.
As any lawyer will tell you, the vast majority of civil cases never go to trial. On TV
dramas like “The Good Wife,” the courtroom show must go on.
In the real world, however, parties often agree on a number to avoid the expense,
uncertainty and emotional toll of a trial. A check is cut. Life goes on.
But in Scotty Eveland’s terrible — and possibly avoidable — tragedy, life shouldn’t go
on without our knowing exactly what happened on Sept. 14, 2007 — and afterward.
In the end, Scotty could very well receive a cash award. No question, the family
needs the money. Scotty is horribly disabled from brain trauma suffered while playing
football for Mission Hills High School, but he could live a normal life span. His
financially strapped parents worry he’ll be warehoused after they’re gone.
To spare itself from a lacerating trial, the district — or its insurer — could very well
decide to write a check and tamp down public testimony alleging the following:
• The week before the 2007 game, Scotty twice complained of headaches. The adult
trainer, Scott Gommel, evidently did not see the pain as possible symptoms of a
concussion that needed time to heal.
• During the warm-up before the game, Scotty said his headache was so bad he was
unable to focus on the ball and asked to sit out the first quarter. The trainer took this
information to the football coach, Chris Hauser.
According to a student trainer, Hauser said it was his call and ordered Scotty into the
game.
• Before he collapsed in the second quarter, Scotty was “super-winded” and dizzy.
Scotty, a second-string middle linebacker subbing for an injured starter, was
mumbling in the huddle, unable to call a defensive play.
• The neurosurgeon who treated Scotty declared in an early deposition that Scotty’s
injury was the result of a blow to the head during the game. However, once former
student trainers raised the specter of Scotty’s headaches, Dr. Vrijesh Tantuwaya
changed his diagnosis, concluding that Scotty most likely had sustained a
concussion before the game.
“Had he been provided appropriate medical attention based on the alleged pre-game
symptoms,” Tantuwaya said under oath, “he would have likely been appropriately
diagnosed and treated, and he would have likely had a complete recovery. Returning
him to play after he complained of headaches and difficulty seeing was a
catastrophic error of judgment.”
• More murky, but just as disturbing, is the allegation of a conspiracy by high school
officials to cover up Coach Hauser’s decision to play Scotty despite red flags.
According to several witnesses, school officials ordered that no one was to talk to
lawyers or media. The silence was broken last year when a former student trainer
came forward. Others followed suit.
Employing a tactic that would have been laughable if the stakes weren’t so serious,
the district’s attorney argued in a court hearing that the lawsuit should be thrown out
because the original complaint did not focus on Scotty’s pre-game headache, an
allegation that emerged after the lawsuit was filed.
Vista Judge Thomas Nugent rejected the district’s desperate ploy before ordering the
case to trial.
For a reality check, I called Paul Pfingst, the former county district attorney, and
asked him the burning question: If — if — the plaintiff’s allegations are true, is there
any criminal liability among the adult players in this drama?
“Perjury,” Pfingst said. If people lied under oath — and several district officials,
including the coach and trainer, have testified that Scotty did not seem impaired
before the game — then a DA might charge them with perjury.
But what about ordering an impaired player into a game in which his head was
certain to be hit? Isn’t that a crime?
Only if he’d died, Pfingst said. If Scotty had died, then a charge of involuntary
manslaughter could be considered, Pfingst said.
To come full circle: If the testimony of several former student trainers is true — and
they have no apparent reason to lie — the moral force of Scotty’s story should not be
blunted with a big check.
If Scotty’s life was ruined by those charged with protecting him on the field of play, his
injury deserves more than a financial reckoning. It deserves a moral reckoning.
The San Marcos school board should be compelled to step up and clean house. If
anyone was involved in a reckless decision and subsequent cover-up, they should
be fired. And the young trainers who blew the whistle should be honored.
With an honest accounting, in a courtroom and in the press, Scotty’s story could
bang some sense into the head of every coach in the country.
No player with an unexplained headache should play football, period.
damaged football player's lawsuit
By Logan Jenkins
SDUT
April 19, 2011
My biggest fear about Eveland vs. San Marcos Unified School District is that the
lawsuit will be settled without a full accounting before a jury.
I know. I sound naive.
As any lawyer will tell you, the vast majority of civil cases never go to trial. On TV
dramas like “The Good Wife,” the courtroom show must go on.
In the real world, however, parties often agree on a number to avoid the expense,
uncertainty and emotional toll of a trial. A check is cut. Life goes on.
But in Scotty Eveland’s terrible — and possibly avoidable — tragedy, life shouldn’t go
on without our knowing exactly what happened on Sept. 14, 2007 — and afterward.
In the end, Scotty could very well receive a cash award. No question, the family
needs the money. Scotty is horribly disabled from brain trauma suffered while playing
football for Mission Hills High School, but he could live a normal life span. His
financially strapped parents worry he’ll be warehoused after they’re gone.
To spare itself from a lacerating trial, the district — or its insurer — could very well
decide to write a check and tamp down public testimony alleging the following:
• The week before the 2007 game, Scotty twice complained of headaches. The adult
trainer, Scott Gommel, evidently did not see the pain as possible symptoms of a
concussion that needed time to heal.
• During the warm-up before the game, Scotty said his headache was so bad he was
unable to focus on the ball and asked to sit out the first quarter. The trainer took this
information to the football coach, Chris Hauser.
According to a student trainer, Hauser said it was his call and ordered Scotty into the
game.
• Before he collapsed in the second quarter, Scotty was “super-winded” and dizzy.
Scotty, a second-string middle linebacker subbing for an injured starter, was
mumbling in the huddle, unable to call a defensive play.
• The neurosurgeon who treated Scotty declared in an early deposition that Scotty’s
injury was the result of a blow to the head during the game. However, once former
student trainers raised the specter of Scotty’s headaches, Dr. Vrijesh Tantuwaya
changed his diagnosis, concluding that Scotty most likely had sustained a
concussion before the game.
“Had he been provided appropriate medical attention based on the alleged pre-game
symptoms,” Tantuwaya said under oath, “he would have likely been appropriately
diagnosed and treated, and he would have likely had a complete recovery. Returning
him to play after he complained of headaches and difficulty seeing was a
catastrophic error of judgment.”
• More murky, but just as disturbing, is the allegation of a conspiracy by high school
officials to cover up Coach Hauser’s decision to play Scotty despite red flags.
According to several witnesses, school officials ordered that no one was to talk to
lawyers or media. The silence was broken last year when a former student trainer
came forward. Others followed suit.
Employing a tactic that would have been laughable if the stakes weren’t so serious,
the district’s attorney argued in a court hearing that the lawsuit should be thrown out
because the original complaint did not focus on Scotty’s pre-game headache, an
allegation that emerged after the lawsuit was filed.
Vista Judge Thomas Nugent rejected the district’s desperate ploy before ordering the
case to trial.
For a reality check, I called Paul Pfingst, the former county district attorney, and
asked him the burning question: If — if — the plaintiff’s allegations are true, is there
any criminal liability among the adult players in this drama?
“Perjury,” Pfingst said. If people lied under oath — and several district officials,
including the coach and trainer, have testified that Scotty did not seem impaired
before the game — then a DA might charge them with perjury.
But what about ordering an impaired player into a game in which his head was
certain to be hit? Isn’t that a crime?
Only if he’d died, Pfingst said. If Scotty had died, then a charge of involuntary
manslaughter could be considered, Pfingst said.
To come full circle: If the testimony of several former student trainers is true — and
they have no apparent reason to lie — the moral force of Scotty’s story should not be
blunted with a big check.
If Scotty’s life was ruined by those charged with protecting him on the field of play, his
injury deserves more than a financial reckoning. It deserves a moral reckoning.
The San Marcos school board should be compelled to step up and clean house. If
anyone was involved in a reckless decision and subsequent cover-up, they should
be fired. And the young trainers who blew the whistle should be honored.
With an honest accounting, in a courtroom and in the press, Scotty’s story could
bang some sense into the head of every coach in the country.
No player with an unexplained headache should play football, period.
Gag order denied in Eveland case
By J. Harry Jones
San Diego Union-Tribune
August 31, 2011
VISTA — A Vista Superior Court judge has denied a motion to issue a gag order on
all parties connected to an ongoing lawsuit about Mission Hills High School football
player Scott Eveland who suffered a catastrophic brain injury during a game nearly
four years ago.
Judge Thomas P. Nugent denied the gag order request made by San Marcos Unified
School District lawyers who had cited a San Diego Union-Tribune story published in
July as being potentially prejudicial. The story, headlined “Clock Ticking on
Injured Man’s Care,” reported how Eveland’s insurance being used for
extensive therapy would run out upon his 22nd birthday in December. The
district accused one of Eveland’s lawyers of unethical conduct for going to the press
with the information, which they said was evidence a jury would likely never hear.
The trial over the lawsuit is scheduled to begin Nov. 4 and would last eight to 10
weeks.
Judge Nugent said the school district lawyers “failed to make an adequate showing
on any” of the requirements needed to take such drastic action as to place a prior
restraint on speech.
The judge also noted that reader comments made beneath the story as it
appeared on the newspaper’s website, signonsandiego.com, “fell on both
sides.”
The lawsuit alleges that Eveland was suffering from severe headaches
during the days before and night of the 2007 football game and asked to be
kept out of the game because the pain was so great that he could barely
focus on the ball. Witnesses have come forward saying they heard the
school’s athletic trainer recommend to Head Coach Chris Hauser not to play
Eveland, but Hauser ignored the advice and put Eveland into the game. The
boy collapsed before the end of the first half. Hauser and the trainer have
denied during depositions knowing about any headaches.
Eveland has made slow progress since the injury but still requires 24-hour care.
By J. Harry Jones
San Diego Union-Tribune
August 31, 2011
VISTA — A Vista Superior Court judge has denied a motion to issue a gag order on
all parties connected to an ongoing lawsuit about Mission Hills High School football
player Scott Eveland who suffered a catastrophic brain injury during a game nearly
four years ago.
Judge Thomas P. Nugent denied the gag order request made by San Marcos Unified
School District lawyers who had cited a San Diego Union-Tribune story published in
July as being potentially prejudicial. The story, headlined “Clock Ticking on
Injured Man’s Care,” reported how Eveland’s insurance being used for
extensive therapy would run out upon his 22nd birthday in December. The
district accused one of Eveland’s lawyers of unethical conduct for going to the press
with the information, which they said was evidence a jury would likely never hear.
The trial over the lawsuit is scheduled to begin Nov. 4 and would last eight to 10
weeks.
Judge Nugent said the school district lawyers “failed to make an adequate showing
on any” of the requirements needed to take such drastic action as to place a prior
restraint on speech.
The judge also noted that reader comments made beneath the story as it
appeared on the newspaper’s website, signonsandiego.com, “fell on both
sides.”
The lawsuit alleges that Eveland was suffering from severe headaches
during the days before and night of the 2007 football game and asked to be
kept out of the game because the pain was so great that he could barely
focus on the ball. Witnesses have come forward saying they heard the
school’s athletic trainer recommend to Head Coach Chris Hauser not to play
Eveland, but Hauser ignored the advice and put Eveland into the game. The
boy collapsed before the end of the first half. Hauser and the trainer have
denied during depositions knowing about any headaches.
Eveland has made slow progress since the injury but still requires 24-hour care.
SDUT columnist Logan
Jenkins writes about the gag
request:
In April, after I’d written a column
about the really disturbing questions
raised by deposed witnesses, Shinoff
emailed me.
“Being the mensch you are,” he wrote,
“I am confident you will extend your
apologies to this fine educational
community when the truth comes out
in court.”
Maura Larkins comment to Mr. Shinoff:
And what if a court of law finds that
YOUR clients are not such fine
individuals, and, in fact, have testified
falsely? Will YOU apologize, Mr.
Shinoff, to the courageous people who
came forward with the truth?
I think you already owe an apology to
Diane Young, the principal in Mountain
Empire Unified School District who was
found by a court of law to have been
telling the truth about your client
Patrick Judd.
Muzzle motion denied
Logan Jenkins
signonsandiego.com
Sept. 6, 2011
A bouquet — the Freedom of
“Extrajudicial” Speech award — to Vista
Superior Court Judge Thomas P. Nugent
for turning a decisive thumb down on what
would have been an extremely rare gag
order in a lawsuit over the brain injury
suffered by Mission Hills football player
Scott Eveland almost four years ago.
According to Nugent’s ruling, attorneys for
the San Marcos Unified School District
wanted to preclude “any parties’ counsel
from publicly commenting about
inadmissible evidence or making
extrajudicial prejudicial comments about
this case — including judgments on the
evidence expected to be presented in this
case — to parties not directly involved in
this litigation.”
In his ruling, Nugent emphasized that
“prior restraint” of speech is a serious
matter that requires serious justification,
as is sometimes the case in criminal trials
involving ongoing investigations. He
rejected the defense’s claim that
quotations attributed to plaintiff attorneys
in a Union-Tribune article either posed a
danger to a fair trial.
This is a good thing for the free flow of
information. All signs point to an
exhausting November trial that at long last
will answer the two main questions:
Did Scott’s coach send his player into a
game knowing he was suffering from
severe headaches? Was there a cover-up
after Scott collapsed?
It’s essential that lawyers from both sides
help reporters frame high-profile, high-
stakes cases, as this one surely is.
Is there always the danger of spin? Sure.
But even the relatively taciturn defense
team, spearheaded by well-known
attorney Dan Shinoff, is not above
planting a seed of guilt and hoping it will
grow into softer pretrial treatment.
In April, after I’d written a column
about the really disturbing questions
raised by deposed witnesses, Shinoff
emailed me.
“Being the mensch you are,” he
wrote, “I am confident you will extend
your apologies to this fine
educational community when the
truth comes out in court.”
Shinoff went on to imply that the region’s
stellar medical experts would confirm that
the San Marcos district is not culpable in
Scott’s brain injury.
Maybe so. I’m not prejudging the trial’s
outcome. Maybe the witnesses are
mistaken. Maybe there were no reported
headaches. Maybe Scott’s injury was
caused by a single hit during the game.
Maybe the district is guiltless, as Shinoff
suggests.
But I am prejudging the defensive muzzle
motion, which is enough to make you
gag...
Jenkins writes about the gag
request:
In April, after I’d written a column
about the really disturbing questions
raised by deposed witnesses, Shinoff
emailed me.
“Being the mensch you are,” he wrote,
“I am confident you will extend your
apologies to this fine educational
community when the truth comes out
in court.”
Maura Larkins comment to Mr. Shinoff:
And what if a court of law finds that
YOUR clients are not such fine
individuals, and, in fact, have testified
falsely? Will YOU apologize, Mr.
Shinoff, to the courageous people who
came forward with the truth?
I think you already owe an apology to
Diane Young, the principal in Mountain
Empire Unified School District who was
found by a court of law to have been
telling the truth about your client
Patrick Judd.
Muzzle motion denied
Logan Jenkins
signonsandiego.com
Sept. 6, 2011
A bouquet — the Freedom of
“Extrajudicial” Speech award — to Vista
Superior Court Judge Thomas P. Nugent
for turning a decisive thumb down on what
would have been an extremely rare gag
order in a lawsuit over the brain injury
suffered by Mission Hills football player
Scott Eveland almost four years ago.
According to Nugent’s ruling, attorneys for
the San Marcos Unified School District
wanted to preclude “any parties’ counsel
from publicly commenting about
inadmissible evidence or making
extrajudicial prejudicial comments about
this case — including judgments on the
evidence expected to be presented in this
case — to parties not directly involved in
this litigation.”
In his ruling, Nugent emphasized that
“prior restraint” of speech is a serious
matter that requires serious justification,
as is sometimes the case in criminal trials
involving ongoing investigations. He
rejected the defense’s claim that
quotations attributed to plaintiff attorneys
in a Union-Tribune article either posed a
danger to a fair trial.
This is a good thing for the free flow of
information. All signs point to an
exhausting November trial that at long last
will answer the two main questions:
Did Scott’s coach send his player into a
game knowing he was suffering from
severe headaches? Was there a cover-up
after Scott collapsed?
It’s essential that lawyers from both sides
help reporters frame high-profile, high-
stakes cases, as this one surely is.
Is there always the danger of spin? Sure.
But even the relatively taciturn defense
team, spearheaded by well-known
attorney Dan Shinoff, is not above
planting a seed of guilt and hoping it will
grow into softer pretrial treatment.
In April, after I’d written a column
about the really disturbing questions
raised by deposed witnesses, Shinoff
emailed me.
“Being the mensch you are,” he
wrote, “I am confident you will extend
your apologies to this fine
educational community when the
truth comes out in court.”
Shinoff went on to imply that the region’s
stellar medical experts would confirm that
the San Marcos district is not culpable in
Scott’s brain injury.
Maybe so. I’m not prejudging the trial’s
outcome. Maybe the witnesses are
mistaken. Maybe there were no reported
headaches. Maybe Scott’s injury was
caused by a single hit during the game.
Maybe the district is guiltless, as Shinoff
suggests.
But I am prejudging the defensive muzzle
motion, which is enough to make you
gag...
Scott Eveland lawsuit regarding football injury
at San Marcos Unified School District
at San Marcos Unified School District
San Diego
Education Report
Education Report
SDCOE-JPA lawyers are defending the school district