Everyone Wants to Sue the Eagles for Jalen Hurts. Here's Why I'd Pass.
What happened to Jalen Hurts?
Jalen Hurts is the starting quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles. He is a Super Bowl champion and Super Bowl MVP, a three-time Pro Bowler, and he is in the middle of a five-year, $255 million contract. He is, by any measure, one of the most valuable players in the NFL. And as of today, he is out for the season.
Here is the timeline, as the Eagles and Hurts' agent have described it. Hurts got cleated in the calf during a game against the Rams on October 4. He asked for treatment on October 8 and practiced in full. The team flew to London for a game against the Jaguars, and after landing, an ultrasound revealed what the team called a "superficial" blood clot in his left calf. The medical staff concluded he could safely play. He played all sixty minutes. Then he flew home across the Atlantic.
A follow-up ultrasound the next Wednesday showed the clot had moved. He was ruled out for Week 6. Over the weekend, further testing showed the real picture: a deep vein thrombosis in his leg and blood clots in both lungs, what doctors call bilateral pulmonary emboli. He is now on blood thinners, likely for a minimum of three months. You cannot play contact football on blood thinners, because a routine hit can cause uncontrolled internal bleeding. His season is over.
Social media has filled in the gaps with more dramatic details, including claims that he was up until 4:00 AM the night before the London game undergoing vascular testing and was told not to sleep. I cannot verify those claims, and neither can anyone posting them. But even on the team's own official version of events, the question being asked all over the internet is a fair one: who signed off on letting a man with a known blood clot play a football game and then sit on an eight-hour flight?
Everyone assumes this is a nine-figure lawsuit
The moment the diagnosis became public, the conversation turned to lawyers.
Commentators are talking about gross negligence and massive legal liability. People on social media are already putting a number on it, and the number always has a lot of zeros, because the player's contract has a lot of zeros.
I have been a plaintiff's medical malpractice and personal injury attorney in New York for a long time, and I come from a family that has been doing this work for over fifty combined years. So let me tell you what actually happens when a case like this walks through the door at Blitz Law Group. The celebrity doesn't matter. The contract doesn't matter. The headlines don't matter. What matters is whether the case has the three things every medical malpractice case must have, and whether it has enough of all three to be worth bringing.
My verdict, up front: strong negligence, weak case. Here's why.
The three elements of a malpractice case
In New York, a medical malpractice case requires three things, and you need all three. Two out of three gets you nothing.
A departure from the standard of care. The doctor or medical staff did something a reasonably prudent practitioner would not have done under the same circumstances, or failed to do something a prudent practitioner would have done.
Causation. That departure actually caused the injury. Not "might have contributed." Caused. In New York this means the departure was a substantial factor in bringing about the harm, and you prove it through expert testimony.
Damages. A real, lasting injury that the law compensates. Not a scare. Not a close call. An injury.
Most people focus on the first element, because that is the part that makes them angry. The Eagles let him play. The Eagles put him on a plane. That may well be negligence. But a case is not filed on anger, and the third element is where this one falls apart.
Departures: let's assume there were several
For the sake of this analysis, let's assume the worst version of the reports is true and that there were clear departures from the standard of care.
Clearing a player with a known blood clot in his leg to play sixty minutes of professional football, possibly on no sleep, is a departure a vascular expert could easily support. Putting that same player on a long-haul transatlantic flight is another. Prolonged immobility and cabin conditions on a long flight are well-known risk factors for clots in the legs, and for those clots breaking loose and traveling to the lungs. A prudent physician who knew a clot was present would, at minimum, have had a serious conversation about that flight.
There is also a second cause of action most people are not talking about: lack of informed consent. In New York, a doctor who fails to tell a patient the reasonably foreseeable risks of a treatment or course of action, where a reasonable patient would have declined had they known, can be liable even if the care itself was technically competent. If nobody sat Jalen Hurts down and said, "You have a clot, here is what can happen if you play, and here is what can happen on that plane, "that is a separate claim.
So on departures, let's give the case full credit. Assume it's there.
Causation: a provable link
Having a departure is not enough. You must prove that the departure caused the injury. That is the link between what the doctors did wrong and what happened to the patient, and in New York it has to come from a qualified expert.
Here, I think an expert could get there. A clot was documented in the leg before the game. The player was subjected to sixty minutes of violent physical activity and then hours of immobility in a pressurized cabin. Days later, the clot had moved, and shortly after that there were clots in both lungs. A vascular surgeon or hematologist could credibly opine that the flight and the game, taken together, were a substantial factor in the clot dislodging and traveling to his lungs. The defense would argue the clot might have embolized anyway, and that fight would be real, but it is a fight a plaintiff could win.
So let's assume causation too. Departures and causation. Most people would call that a case. It isn't. Not yet.
Damages: the part that surprises everyone
Here is what I have to explain to clients more often than anything else. You cannot sue for what could have happened. You can only sue for what did happen.
Jalen Hurts suffered multiple pulmonary embolisms. That is a frightening, life-threatening event. He absolutely could have died. I do not want to minimize it for a second. But by the account of his own team and his own agent, he is clinically stable, he has no significant functional limitations, his prognosis is very good, and a full recovery is expected. His treatment is a course of blood thinners, and when he is off them, he is expected to be cleared to play football again.
In a malpractice case, damages need to be permanent and consequential. A patient who is left with a lifelong disability, an organ that no longer works, chronic pain, or a shortened life has damages. A patient who went through something terrifying and then got better has a much harder time. Fear is real, but the law does not pay for the catastrophe that was avoided.
So what is Jalen Hurts actually left with?
A lost season. This is the obvious one. But he is under contract, and I have to imagine a $255 million contract carries insurance and guarantees. If he is being paid while he sits, there is no lost income to recover.
Lost future earnings. Maybe this was the season that would have made his next contract even bigger. Maybe. But that is speculation, and courts do not award damages for a hypothetical contract that was never offered. You need to prove lost earnings with reasonable certainty, and "he might have had a great year" is not certainty.
Pain and suffering. He had a serious medical scare, a hospital stay, and months on medication. That is compensable, but if the recovery is complete, the number is a fraction of what the public imagines.
Medical expenses. Likely covered entirely by the team and the league.
Strip away the fame and look at the injury itself: a clot that caused a temporary, treatable condition with an expected full recovery. That is the damages case. It is not nothing, but it is not what the internet thinks it is.
Would I take this case?
Honestly, I would probably pass. And I say that as someone who believes the Eagles' medical staff very likely made serious mistakes.
Medical malpractice cases are expensive and hard. You are up against hospitals, teams, insurers, and defense firms with unlimited resources. You need multiple experts, each of whom costs tens of thousands of dollars before you ever see a courtroom. A plaintiff's lawyer takes those cases on contingency, meaning we front every dollar and only get paid if we win. That math only works when the damages justify the fight.
A case with strong departures, provable causation, and a full recovery is a case where you can spend years and a small fortune to prove the doctors were wrong, and then have very little to show the client at the end. That is not a case I would take, and it is not a case I would advise a client to bring.
There is one more hurdle most commentators are missing. Jalen Hurts is an employee of the Philadelphia Eagles, and the team doctors who cleared him were acting on behalf of his employer. Injuries to NFL players are governed by a collective bargaining agreement and, in most states, by workers' compensation law. That means a claim against the team's medical staff may never reach a civil courtroom at all. It may get routed into the grievance process or the workers' comp system, where the recovery is a fraction of what a jury could award. Anyone who has actually litigated against a professional sports franchise knows this is the first fight, and it is a hard one.
You do not take a case because the client is famous. You do not take a case because the story went viral. You do not take a case because a commentator said the word "negligence" on television. You take a case because a real person was permanently harmed by someone who should have known better, and because the law can actually make that person whole. If the injury is not permanent, the law has very little to offer, no matter how outrageous the conduct was.
If Jalen Hurts' recovery turns out to be incomplete, if there is lasting lung damage, a permanent clotting condition, or a career that never comes back, this analysis changes completely. That is why you wait, you watch, and you let the medicine tell you what the case is.
How Blitz Law Group evaluates a malpractice case
This is exactly how we look at every medical malpractice and negligence case that comes into our office, whether the client is a professional athlete or a grandmother from Queens.
We start with the medicine, not the story. We get the records. We have them reviewed by physicians in the right specialty. We find out what the standard of care was and whether it was met.
We ask whether the departure actually caused the harm. Bad medicine that didn't change the outcome is not a case.
We look hard at damages. Is the injury permanent? Is it consequential? Will it affect the client's life, work, and future? Those are the questions that decide whether a case is worth years of fighting.
We tell you the truth. If the case is not there, we say so. We would rather tell a client no today than drag them through years of litigation that goes nowhere.
Blitz Law Group handles catastrophic medical malpractice, wrongful death, and serious personal injury cases throughout New York. If you or someone you love was harmed by a doctor, a hospital, or a medical staff that should have known better, call us. We will give you the same honest evaluation I just gave Jalen Hurts, and if the case is there, we will fight for it.
Justin Blitz is the Managing Partner of Blitz Law Group, LLP, 260 Madison Avenue, New York, NY . This post is commentary on publicly reported events and is not legal advice. The analysis above assumes facts that have not been verified and are offered only to illustrate how malpractice cases are evaluated.
Comments