Some statements must be removed from the lawsuit concerning the football player’s death.
Allegations that MU football player Aaron O’Neal knew he was going to die and that no one was going to help him are among the statements that must be stricken from his parents’ wrongful death lawsuit, a 13th District Circuit Court judge ruled Wednesday.
Attorneys for the O’Neal family also must specify exactly which NCAA rules and other regulations each of the 14 defendants in the suit allegedly committed.
Circuit Judge Gary Oxenhandler made the rulings in response to a March 12 hearing in which the defendants’ attorney, Hamp Ford, argued that certain statements in the lawsuit were “immaterial and impertinent” and that they went beyond the “short and plain statement” of fact and dealt with conclusions, opinions and argument.
Oxenhandler agreed on some counts, ordering that the O’Neals’ attorneys remove statements in the lawsuit, which include that “O’Neal was beginning to die” during drills and that O’Neal looked like a “flower wilting” when he collapsed on Faurot Field. Oxenhandler also ordered the removal of a statement that quotes a paramedic saying “two assholes” at the Tom Taylor Athletic Training Facility did not direct him to O’Neal.
O’Neal, a 19-year-old linebacker, died July 12, 2005, after a voluntary practice. Lonnie O’Neal, Aaron O’Neal’s father, filed the wrongful death suit against 14 MU athletics department employees on Aug. 23, 2005. Deborah O’Neal, Aaron O’Neal’s mother, later joined the lawsuit.
Ford said Wednesday afternoon that Oxenhandler’s ruling demonstrated that he considered the case carefully and that he agreed the defendants deserved a “more definite statement” about exactly which regulations they are said to have violated. “That is what was asked for,” Ford said. “I think the court acted appropriately.”
But Bob Blitz, one of the attorneys representing the O’Neal family, called Wednesday’s ruling a “non-event.”
“From a lawyer’s perspective, the striking of those few words do not change the lawsuit at all,” Blitz said.
The statements that Oxenhandler ordered removed, Blitz said, were “words in the motion that the university did not want to see.”
Oxenhandler also ruled that O’Neal’s attorneys must specify what rules and standards each defendant is alleged to have violated by referencing particular sections of guidelines of the NCAA, the Big 12 conference, the National Association of Athletic Trainers, the National Strength and Conditioning Association, the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association and the University and Emergency Action Plan.
O’Neal’s attorneys allege that MU Athletics Director Mike Alden, MU football coach Gary Pinkel, team medical director Rex Sharp and 11 other trainers and strength-and-conditioning coaches “committed well over 100 violations.” These violations contributed to O’Neal’s death, the lawsuit alleges.
“However, in its extensive pleading, nowhere have the plaintiffs defined which requirements, guidelines or procedures apply to any of the defendants individually,” Oxenhandler wrote in his ruling.
The judge ordered that the O’Neals’ attorneys submit an amended lawsuit within 30 days.
Missourian reporter Jennifer Eng contributed to this report.