Draft:Cyril V. Smith

• Comment: The subject is likely notable, but the sourcing of references is inadequate. Many of the inline citations do not even mention Smith - they relate generally to the litigations; some are simply links to corporate websites (4, 14, 15). While some refs (1, 2, 27, for example) appear to be significant coverage of the subject in reliable sources, others make only passing mentions of Smith (22, for example). Paul W (talk) 14:03, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

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Cyril V. (Cy) Smith (born August 4, 1960) is an American lawyer who has represented National Football League (NFL) players in head injury-related litigation against the league's pension plan. He won the first-ever legal judgements against the NFL Pension Plan and his 2020 lawsuit brought attention to the NFL's use of race-based standards for evaluating retiree benefit claims.

Smith is partner in the Baltimore office of Zuckerman Spaeder, LLP, and is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.

Professional work

In 2004, Smith sued the NFL's pension plan on behalf of the estate of Michael "Mike" Webster, a former player for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs who had died in 2002, alleging that his repeated concussions from playing pro football had caused multiple brain injuries and ultimately led to his total disability. Smith won that case in 2005, with the federal trial court finding that Webster's estate was entitled to more than $1 million in unpaid disability pension benefits. In 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld that finding.

In 2007 Smith testified before the U.S. Congress about these rulings, which were the first legal judgments of any kind against the NFL's pension plan. The New York Times reported that Webster's fight for benefits helped lead to "hundreds of cases filed by retired N.F.L. players who said the league had hid from them the dangers of playing football."

In 2020, Smith, along with Justin Wyatt of J.R. Wyatt Law, and Edward Stone of Edward Stone Law, brought a class action lawsuit challenging the NFL's use of race-based standards for evaluating players' benefit claims under the 2015 concussion settlement. Settlement payments were based on players' loss in cognitive ability compared to "norms" on neuropsychological tests adjusted for several factors, including whether the player was Black or White. The norms, in turn, assumed that Blacks started with lower cognitive ability than Whites, so that White players were presumed to have lost more cognitive ability than their Black teammates.

Representing former players Kevin Henry and Najeh Davenport, Smith argued that this "race-norming" practice placed Black retirees at a distinct disadvantage. The lawsuit led to an investigation by ABC News and notable media attention focused on the NFL's use of race-based norms, which experts called "morally unconscionable," "deeply discriminatory," and "on the eugenics level."

Smith helped to negotiate a 2022 agreement with the NFL, under which the league eliminated the use of race-norming and gave Black retirees the chance to receive benefits under race-neutral standards. An August 2022 interim report filed by the administrator of the concussion settlement said that, following these changes, more than 300 Black ex-players had become eligible for new or increased benefits, with the possibility of many more eventually becoming eligible.

The public exposure of the NFL's race-norming practice has contributed to a reexamination of race-based standards of care and in several areas of American healthcare. As one example, The American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychologists called for "the elimination of race as a variable in demographically-based normative test interpretation” – a decision reported to be a result of the attention generated by Smith's lawsuit.

Other work

Smith has represented a number of other retired American football players, including Jesse Solomon, whose case further drew the link between football and the disease known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE.

Smith has regularly spoken out on issues related to football and head injuries, and he has published opinion articles with USA Today, ESPN, CBS News, Sports Business Journal, and other outlets.

Beyond sports-related cases, Smith has represented individuals in high-stakes cases, including the son of real estate mogul and corporate raider Victor Posner in a multimillion-dollar settlement in one of the largest will contests in U.S. history and an accountant in the Manila office of a global construction firm, who was kidnapped and tortured after the employer refused to pay his ransom or permit his family to do so.

Smith was selected by the Alabama federal district court to serve on the five-person Plaintiffs' Steering Committee in the consolidated national class action antitrust proceedings against the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurers. The settlement in that case requires the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurers to pay $2.67 billion to insureds and to undertake sweeping changes in the ways the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurers compete in the national health insurance market.

Awards and honors

• Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business, Litigation: General Commercial (Maryland)
• Law360 Benefits MVP of the Year (2022)
• The National Law Journal, Plaintiffs' Lawyer Trailblazer (2023 and 2017)
• The Daily Record, Leadership in Law Award (2009)