The 5th District Court of Appeal in Florida has a reduced a damage award, from $10 million to $200,000, in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of a University of Central Florida football player who died following conditioning drills in March of 2008. In so ruling, the three-judge panel determined that defendant University of Central Florida Athletic Association (UCFAA) was entitled to sovereign immunity.
However, the victory for the defendant was not complete. The court denied UCFAA’s request for a new trial, finding, among other things, that student athlete Ereck Plancher did not expressly waive his rights to sue UCFAA when he signed a medical release.
In the months after Plancher tragic death, it was determined that the then 19-year-old carried the sickle-cell trait, a condition that has been a contributing factor in such deaths. During intense activity, the trait can hamper the body’s ability to distribute oxygen, resulting in malformation, or “sickling,” of cells in the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, pancreas, kidneys, adrenal glands, and thymus.
After their son’s death, his parents, Enock and Giselle Plancher, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against UCFAA and the UCF board of trustees on March 12, 2009, alleging coaches and athletic trainers were negligent in the treatment of their son.
The Planchers were initially successful in the courts. In June 2011, an Orange County jury awarded them $10 million in damages, finding the defendants negligent in their son’s death.
UCF Athletics Association, along with insurance company Great American Assurance Co., appealed the ruling, leading to the instant opinion.
The plaintiffs argued that because UCF separated the athletic department from the main university, it operated as a private corporation, voiding any sovereign immunity protection. Sovereign immunity is a common law principle, which holds that a government cannot be sued in its own courts without its consent. Florida law waives sovereign immunity for personal injury actions, including negligence, but limits damages to $200,000.
The court disagreed with the plaintiffs, writing that UCFAA “is wholly controlled by and intertwined with UCF, in that UCF created it, funded it and can dissolve it, in addition to oversee its day-to-day operations.”
Understandably, UCF was pleased with the ruling.
“The ruling about sovereign immunity confirms our long-held position about this important issue, and we are pleased with the decision,” UCF spokesman Grant J. Heston said in a statement.
The plaintiffs? Less so.
“The result of this ruling guts the outcome of the trial court’s judgments, as well as the verdict rendered by the jury that heard all the evidence,” Plancher family attorney Steve Yerrid wrote in a statement.
“For the Plancher family and the sake of all Floridians, we are extremely troubled by such a broad expansion of sovereign immunity to a corporation such as the UCFAA when there is very little, if any, state involvement in its actual operations. To allow immunity in such circumstances creates a dangerous precedent for student-athletes and their families.”
Yerrid has since appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court of Florida.
UCFAA was less successful with its other argument, that a medical release signed by Plancher when he joined the football team absolved it of liability. Such releases generally suggest that student athletes assume the risk of injury.
The UCF release read as follows:
“In consideration of the University of Central Florida Athletic Association, Inc. permitting me to participate in intercollegiate athletics and to engage in all activities and travel related to my sport, I hereby voluntarily assume all risks associated with participation and agree to exonerate, save harmless and release the University of Central Florida Athletic Association, Inc., its agents, servants, trustees, and employees from any and all liability, any medical expenses not covered by the University of Central Florida Athletic Association’s athletics medical insurance coverage, and all claims, causes of action or demands of any kind and nature whatsoever which may arise by or in connection with my participation in any activities related to intercollegiate athletics.”
The lower court found the release that Plancher signed to be “ambiguous” at best and “unenforceable as a matter of law.” And the appeals court agreed.
