NFL Concussion Settlement: Claims, Denials, and the Fraud Scheme

The NFL concussion settlement is an uncapped, court-supervised compensation program that pays retired professional football players who develop serious neurological conditions linked to repeated head trauma. It was finalized in 2015, is designed to run 65 years, and has paid more than $1.6 billion across roughly 2,100 approved claims as of mid-2026.¹ Any player who retired from the NFL, its predecessor leagues, or its developmental leagues before July 7, 2014 was automatically included unless he opted out, and families of deceased or incapacitated players can file on their behalf.²

The program is supervised by Judge Anita B. Brody in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and by two court-appointed special masters, David A. Hoffman and Jo-Ann M. Verrier.³ BrownGreer PLC administers the claims.⁴

What Conditions Are Covered and How Much They Pay

A qualifying diagnosis of one of six covered conditions triggers a monetary award. The maximum payouts, before adjustments, are:

ALS: $5 million
Death with CTE: $4 million
Parkinson’s disease: $3.5 million
Alzheimer’s disease: $3.5 million
Level 2 neurocognitive impairment, meaning moderate dementia: $3 million
Level 1.5 neurocognitive impairment, meaning early dementia: $1.5 million

Those numbers are the ceiling, not the expectation. Awards are reduced based on the player’s age at diagnosis, the number of eligible seasons he played, and whether he had a prior stroke or a non-football traumatic brain injury. The reductions are steep: a player diagnosed with ALS after age 80 receives $300,000 instead of $5 million. Players who declined to participate in the settlement’s Baseline Assessment Program take an additional 10 percent cut.²

How a Claim Gets Approved

A diagnosis has to come from a board-certified specialist approved by the claims administrator. That gatekeeping is central to the program’s design and central to the problems that have followed. Approved neurologists evaluate the player, the claims administrator reviews the file, and the special masters oversee disputes. The settlement contains no cap on total spending, so every valid claim is supposed to be paid regardless of how many come in.⁵

The 2026 Parkinson’s Fraud Scheme

On June 8, 2026, the special masters filed a 51-page ruling confirming that five law firms had run what they called an “organized scheme” to defraud the settlement through fabricated Parkinson’s disease diagnoses.⁶ The finding followed an 81-page audit issued by the claims administrator in December 2025 after the program received credible tips.

The firms barred from any further participation are Douglas Grossinger, Attorney at Law; Feder Law, LLC; Pro Athlete Law Firm, P.A.; Syme Law, PLLC; and Reppert Oates & Vytell, LLC. None responded to media requests for comment.¹

How the Scheme Worked

The firms recruited retired players and sent them to doctors who were not approved by the program. Those physicians produced Parkinson’s diagnoses after a single visit or brief follow-up, wrote short templated reports without reviewing medical history, and prescribed levodopa so the players appeared to be under treatment when they later saw settlement-approved neurologists.⁶ The approved neurologists, presented with an existing diagnosis and a symptom-suppressing prescription, largely deferred to the paperwork. The special masters said the qualified doctors had been placed in a “difficult diagnostic position” by a scheme specifically designed to exploit their reliance on prior records.¹

One of the non-approved doctors lacked board certification and movement-disorders expertise but performed eight initial evaluations. Another conducted examinations in a Dallas hotel suite.⁷

Who Was Involved

The special masters named Philadelphia attorney Douglas Grossinger as the central figure. Grossinger submitted 15 claims directly and funneled additional cases to Feder Law, Pro Athlete Law Firm, and Syme Law through co-counsel arrangements meant to obscure the paper trail. He allegedly insisted communications stay verbal to avoid written evidence and offered a former associate $75,000, with more to follow, to conceal his role in poaching a client.⁶

Reppert Oates & Vytell ran what the special masters called a “separate but similar scheme.” Partner Bart Oates, himself a retired NFL player, allegedly used his former-player status to recruit clients, promising a Parkinson’s diagnosis if they fired their existing lawyers and hired his firm. The firm also withheld reports from doctors who did not believe a given player actually had the disease.⁶

What It Cost and What Happens Now

The scheme involved claims for 98 retired players. Of those, 57 were approved and paid before the fraud was discovered, totaling more than $95 million, with the firms collecting about $20 million in attorney fees. Four claims were denied or withdrawn through normal channels, and the special masters ordered the remaining 37 pending claims denied.¹ Players whose claims were denied through no fault of their own may restart the process with program-approved physicians.⁸

The special masters also ordered the claims administrator to deny any future claim involving the non-qualified doctors identified in the audit and to develop new safeguards for Parkinson’s diagnoses. All five firms refused to cooperate with the audit, which the special masters called an aggravating factor, and they warned the total fraud figure “may end up being materially higher” as more firms and claims are examined.⁶ The special masters have authority to refer their findings to federal law enforcement, though no criminal referral had been publicly announced as of June 2026.⁹ The $95 million already paid on fraudulent claims has not been publicly clawed back.

Why Many Legitimate Claims Get Denied

Even before the fraud scandal, the program faced sustained criticism for denying claims from players who appeared to be genuinely impaired. A 2024 Washington Post investigation found that the settlement had denied nearly 1,100 dementia claims, including about 300 in which the player had been diagnosed with dementia by the settlement’s own doctors. Of 1,241 claims resting on a player’s personal physician, only about 15 percent were approved. The collective value of denied dementia claims was estimated to exceed $700 million.¹⁰

The main driver is the settlement’s definition of dementia, which lead plaintiff attorney Christopher Seeger acknowledged is “a notch above” the standard used in ordinary American clinical practice. To qualify for even the early-dementia tier, a player must show impairment across at least four tests in two cognitive domains and demonstrate an inability to function independently, including needing prompting for basic hygiene. University of Toronto neurologist Carmela Tartaglia said the criteria are significantly more restrictive than what doctors use in real clinical settings.¹⁰

The wait alone is long. Players waited an average of more than 15 months to see settlement doctors and gather records needed to file. The network of approved doctors shrank by more than 60 percent between 2018 and 2024. In three documented cases, players died before learning whether their claims had been approved.¹¹

The NFL has attributed many denials to fraud and says the process is independently administered. An NFL attorney called the dementia definition “objective” rather than unduly severe. Families of retired players have described the gap between what the settlement promised and what the claims process delivers as a “bait-and-switch.”¹⁰

Race-Norming and Its Reversal

For years, the settlement’s dementia testing used “race-norming,” a practice that assumed lower cognitive baselines for Black players. Because their test scores were graded against a presumption of less cognitive function to begin with, Black retirees had to show a steeper decline to qualify. Former players Najeh Davenport and Kevin Henry brought a race discrimination lawsuit in 2020. Judge Brody dismissed the suit but ordered the parties to negotiate the practice away.¹²

In October 2021, the NFL and class counsel agreed to end all race-norming and to fund an expert panel to develop race-neutral scoring. Black players previously denied compensation would be retested or rescored.¹³ Judge Brody approved the final plan in March 2022, and the revisions were estimated to add at least $100 million to the NFL’s obligations. At that point, more than 3,300 former players or their families had filed brain-injury claims and only about three in ten had been paid.¹²

Where Things Stand

The settlement remains active and is expected to keep paying claims for decades. Total payments through the fund exceed $1.6 billion.¹ The Parkinson’s fraud investigation continues, and the special masters have signaled that additional firms may be implicated. Mediation over the replacement of race-based scoring norms and the reconsideration of previously denied claims is still before Judge Brody’s court.¹⁴

1
The Washington Post. NFL Concussion Settlement Parkinsons
2
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. NFL Concussion Settlement Long-Form Notice
3
Sportico. Retired NFL Players Parkinsons Claims
4
BrownGreer PLC. NFL Concussion Settlement
5
NFL. Revised Settlement in Concussion Suit Reached, Funds Uncapped
6
The Athletic (New York Times). NFL Concussion Settlement Fraud Parkinsons Disease
7
DiyaTV USA. NFL Bars Five Law Firms Over Questionable Parkinsons Claims
8
Boston Herald. Law Firms Cheated NFL Concussion Settlement Claims
9
ESPN. Five Law Firms Accused Defrauding NFL Concussion Fund
10
The Washington Post. NFL Concussion Settlement
11
Brain Injury Association of America. Investigation Shines Light on Large Number of Claim Denials From NFL Concussion Settlement
12
NFL. Judge Approves Fix to Stem Race Bias in NFL Concussion Deal
13
NPR. NFL Concussion Settlement Race Norming CTE
14
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. In Re National Football League Players’ Concussion Injury Litigation