Case Explained: SC football player’s CTE lawsuit survives legal challenges – Legal Perspective

ORANGEBURG — A lawsuit over brain degeneration disease that was filed against a South Carolina college and the National Football League has survived major legal blocks that halted other attempts to establish liability tied to repeated head trauma.

Rulings issued this month in the suit filed against S.C. State University, the NFL and NFL Properties denied the state and national organizations’ motions to dismiss the lawsuit.

The complaint had been filed on behalf of the estate of Phillip Matthew Adams, who died by suicide after murdering six people in Rock Hill in 2021.

Adams’ father, Alonzo Adams, filed the case in Orangeburg County in March 2023.

This month, Circuit Judge Charles J. McCutchen denied defense motions seeking to have the lawsuit thrown out.

The case can now proceed to mediation or trial.

On April 8, 2021, Adams, then 31, entered the Rock Hill home of Dr. Robert and Barbara Lesslie and killed them and their grandchildren, Adah and Noah. He also killed two heating and air-conditioning repairmen, James Lewis and Robert Shook.

Adams then took his own life.

In November 2021, physicians with Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Department determined Phillip Matthew Adams’ frontal lobe was damaged by the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma and concussions: chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

Adams played college football at S.C. State from 2006 to 2009. He went on to play professional football for teams in San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Oakland and New York.

According to court documents, his last professional game was in January 2016.

The lawsuit alleges SCSU and the NFL failed to educate Adams and other players about the danger of concussions and head trauma, and they failed to establish any policies or training to identify and treat players with head trauma and concussions.