Former NHL defenseman Bryan Berard isn’t playing professional hockey any more, yet he’s been in some pretty heated legal disputes lately. He already made news by helping to expose con men in 2013 and now it appears that he’ll be involved in some legal wrangling involving insurance money from his playing days. He’s seeking $18 million overall, according to the New York Post.
While playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2000, then-Ottawa Senators forward Marian Hossa caught him in the right eye with a high stick. That unfortunate incident left Berard with a detached retina and retinal tear, requiring him to undergo seven operations on his right eye. Berard received a $6.3 million settlement in 2001 related to that injury, but returned it to resume his NHL career ... and that’s where the details get a little cloudy.
The New York Daily News breaks down the discrepancy between the two sides:
The insurance company claimed in the complaint that once Berard returned to hockey following the injury in which he was clipped in the right eye with a stick while playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs in a game in Ottawa, eventually losing the sight in his eye, he signed a waiver agreeing to repay the money, and was barred from ever attempting to recoup it.
Berard, the NHL’s top draft choice in 1995, disagrees, and has accused the insurance company of fraud, according to the lawsuit.
But according to Berard, his $6 million personal policy with Standard Security did not originally include language requiring him to repay the insurance money should he return to play, and was inserted in the policy after the company realized that the language was included in two additional policies issued by the NHL and the NHL Players Association by the same company. Berard acknowledges he signed the waivers but says he was not represented by counsel and was not fully informed of what he was signing.
Berard, 37, believes his insurance company “slipped” the waiver in. Berard says that his lawyer clued him into the possibility that he didn’t need to return that $6.3 million payout while discussing a separate case in 2013, according to the New York Daily News.
The Ottawa Senators selected Berard first overall back in 1995. He won the 1997 Calder Trophy and managed to play in parts of six seasons after that injury, winning the 2004 Masterton Trophy in the process.
While he managed to play in the NHL following that injury, Berard told the New York Post that he has “no vision in his right eye.”
(H/T to Puck Daddy.)