Despite vowing to act fast, the firm that oversees the NFL settlement still delays and denies claims, The Post found, including because of players’ online activity.
It took five years, three doctor’s visits, two federal lawsuits and countless emails with his lawyers, but Reggie Brown finally got word in February: He officially had dementia. Which meant, he believed, it was time for the NFL to pay up.
Brown, 64, had been fighting for years to get paid by the landmark NFL concussion settlement, which promised to compensate every former player with dementia or a brain disease linked to head trauma. Under the rules of the settlement, Brown’s lawyers told him, his diagnosis entitled him to about $200,000.
All that stood between him and a check was BrownGreer, the independent administrative firm that examines all claims. He had heard stories about the firm taking months, even years, to review claims, but he hoped his would move quickly. After all, his diagnosis had come from a board-certified settlement doctor who had been vetted by BrownGreer and lawyers for the NFL.
Then, in July, Brown received an email from the firm. Ithad reviewed his tax returns and scoured his social media activity, and it wanted to know:
If Brown had dementia, how had he managed to work part-time, earning about $30,000 annually the last five years?
Why did he claim online he worked as a motivational speaker?
And what about the Facebook posts that showed him attending his daughter’s graduate school graduation, traveling with his wife and going to the gym?
“It feels like these people are really trying to jam me up,” Brown, a former running back for the Atlanta Falcons and Philadelphia Eagles, said in a recent interview in his home outside Atlanta.
When lawyers for the NFL and thousands of former players struck the historic settlement a decade ago, they entrusted the crucial role of managing itto BrownGreer, one of the most experienced firms in the country focused on settlement administration. And BrownGreer’s founding partner, Orran Brown Sr., publicly assured former players that his firm would work to make the process as efficient and fair as possible.
Brown dijo que estaba construyendo una red nacional de médicos aprobados por el acuerdo cuyos diagnósticos darían lugar rápidamente a pagos. Y si bien la empresa consultaría a un panel de médicos expertos en revisión sobre algunas reclamaciones, dijo, rara vez, o nunca, rechazaría reclamaciones que involucraran diagnósticos hechos por esos médicos del acuerdo.
“No recibimos órdenes de la NFL”, dijo entonces. Su firma, añadió, quería “hacer esto correctamente y rápidamente”.
Pero siete años después, BrownGreer ha negado cientos de reclamos que involucran diagnósticos hechos por médicos del acuerdo, y la firma ha pasado meses, y en algunos casos, años, rastreando las redes sociales de los jugadores y examinando los registros médicos, lo que provocó una protesta de ex jugadores y provocó que algunos médicos abandonaran la languideciente red del acuerdo, según descubrió una investigación del Washington Post.
