Derek Boogaard’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the NHL on Friday - almost two years after he died - the New York Times reports.
Boogaard was 28 when he died on May 13, 2011. Reports indicated that he died from a toxic mixture of alcohol and oxycodone.
The report provides more details about the suit:
It contends that the NHL is responsible for the physical trauma and brain damage that Boogaard sustained during six seasons as one of the league’s top enforcers, and for the addiction to prescription painkillers that marked his final two years.
Here’s a little more from the family’s lawyer William Gibbs.
“To distill this to one sentence,” Gibbs said. “You take a young man, you subject him to trauma, you give him pills for that trauma, he becomes addicted to those pills, you promise to treat him for that addiction, and you fail.”
The NHL declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Boogaard’s family also filed a suit against the NHLPA for $9.8 million in November, which was eventually dismissed.
You can read more about the suit in the New York Times report, including this statement from Gibbs:
“It’s easy to watch a game and see these guys as superhuman,” Gibbs said. “And they are not.”
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