NCAA May Be Sued In Maryland
The Maryland Appellate Court has held that the state courts have jurisdiction to hear a claim brought against the NCAA under one of three asserted bases argued by the plaintiff
This appeal addresses the circumstances in which a Maryland trial court may exercise personal jurisdiction over the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), an unincorporated association of colleges and universities that issues and enforces rules governing intercollegiate athletics throughout the United States.
The plaintiff is a Maryland resident who suffers from permanent neurodegenerative brain disease allegedly resulting from repeated head trauma that he sustained while playing college football. The plaintiff alleges that the NCAA caused his condition by failing to inform players of the dangers of brain disease caused by playing college football and failing to protect players from those dangers. The Circuit Court for Baltimore City concluded that it could not exercise personal jurisdiction over the NCAA in this action.
The plaintiff has appealed from the order dismissing the action for lack of personal jurisdiction. For the reasons explained in this opinion, the judgment will be reversed. Although we reject some of the grounds for personal jurisdiction proposed by the plaintiff, we conclude that the NCAA is subject to specific jurisdiction in Maryland with respect to the claims in this action. The NCAA will not be denied due process of law if it is required to defend these claims for injuries allegedly caused by the NCAA’s rules governing college football in the courts of one of the states targeted by those rules.
Plaintiff
From 1999 through 2003, Mr. Haw played football at Rutgers University as a cornerback and kick return specialist. Throughout his last three seasons, he played as a starter for the Rutgers defense. During one year in which he could not play in games because of an injury, he continued to practice with the team.
While attending college at Rutgers, Mr. Haw lived in New Jersey, but maintained his permanent residence in Maryland. After college, he played professional football for a few years before returning to Maryland. He has resided in Baltimore City since 2007.
In the years after his football career ended, Mr. Haw began to exhibit symptoms of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated head trauma.
The NCAA contended that jurisdiction was limited to its place of incorporation in Indiana.
Mr. Haw provided evidence that he played at least one of his college football games in Maryland. Specifically, he offered affidavits and exhibits showing that, on October 21, 2000, he played as a starter for the Rutgers defense in a game against the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He noted that the complaint specifically alleged that his concussive and sub-concussive injuries occurred during every football game in which he participated. He asserted, therefore, that his suit included claims for injuries that he suffered in Maryland.
Jurisdiction
In our judgment, a conclusion that an athlete allegedly injured by the NCAA’s rules governing college sports may seek redress only in the state where those rules were initially made would produce unreasonable results. Under this approach, if the NCAA established rules that endangered athletes in all 50 states, then the NCAA could be sued only in its home state for claims of injuries arising from or relating to those rules. Around the time that Mr. Haw began playing college football, the NCAA’s headquarters were located in Missouri. At present, the NCAA’s headquarters are located in Indiana. The NCAA is free to relocate its headquarters to another location that may be far removed from the potential plaintiffs affected by the NCAA’s rules. For questions of specific jurisdiction, however, what matters is the direction of the activity, not simply where the initial activity takes place. See Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. at 472-73. Traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice do not require courts to adopt the narrow view of a defendant’s activities advocated by the NCAA…
we conclude that due process principles do not prohibit a Maryland trial court from exercising personal jurisdiction over the NCAA with respect to the claims raised in Mr. Haw’s complaint. The NCAA has purposefully directed its rulemaking activities at Maryland (as well as other states). The claims raised by Mr. Haw, a Maryland resident who claims that he sustained at least part of his injuries in Maryland, are sufficiently related to those forum-directed activities. Finally, the NCAA has failed to show that the exercise of personal jurisdiction in these circumstances would be constitutionally unreasonable.
(Mike Frisch)