Retired 49er Wins $2.36-Million Injury Lawsuit

A $2.36-million damage award to Charlie Krueger, former San Francisco 49ers star, could open a floodgate of lawsuits from other retired professional athletes debilitated by career-related injuries, sports industry sources said Thursday.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge John Dearman said that he was sending a tentative order to the 49ers, instructing the National Football League club to pay $2.36 million to Krueger for failing to tell the former defensive tackle that his knee injury could have been crippling.

If the order is allowed to stand, it will be the largest medical malpractice award ever levied against a sports team. The suit also represents the first time a team and a doctor have been successfully sued together by a former player for damages, according to Donald P. Foster, a Philadelphia-based attorney who specializes in compensation cases.

Dearman ruled that the 49ers fraudulently concealed from Krueger the facts about his injury, and used painkillers and steroids to keep him in the lineup. As a result, Krueger nows suffers from a degeneration of the knee that makes it painful for him to walk, stand and crouch.

“They had a duty to tell him everything about his injury and they did not,” said Clark Leslie, Krueger’s attorney. “He would not have risked permanent injury for a couple of years of playing time.”

Foster said that the significance of the case was that it was filed against both a team and a doctor.