Philadelphians and NFL fans across the country collectively shook their heads in disbelief after learning that superstar quarterback Jalen Hurts was diagnosed with bilateral pulmonary emboli, ending his season.
Hurts suffered an injury to his lower leg on October 4, 2026, after being “cleated” while playing against the Los Angeles Rams. When someone is “cleated,” it means that the spikes from another player’s cleats struck or punctured the player’s body. Reports indicate that Hurts continued to practice and traveled with the Eagles for their game in London on October 11. After traveling to London, Hurts continued to report pain in his lower leg and underwent an ultrasound that showed a superficial blood clot in his lower leg. The accuracy of the superficial blood clot diagnosis has been called into question by both real-life medical doctors and those who earned the M.D. on YouTube.
The collective disbelief concerning Hurts’ injury transformed into anger when reports disclosed that Hurts complained of the injury to Eagles medical staff before the team traveled to Europe and that, after the clot was discovered, Hurts may have been advised not to sleep for the 36 hours prior to their game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Unconfirmed reports suggested that the rationale for Hurts not sleeping was to decrease the risk of the clot traveling to his lungs, as if flying across the Atlantic and playing four quarters of NFL football posed any lesser risk.
Even Hurts’ fiercest detractors (Cowboys fans included) expressed fury at the decision-making of the Eagles’ front office and its medical staff. How was Hurts allowed to travel to London despite widespread awareness that air travel increases the risk of blood clots? Long flights are known to increase the risk of deep vein thrombosis, a potentially serious type of blood clot. And, given the gravity of those risks, which include death, why wasn’t Hurts’ health and safety prioritized over a game of football?
Blood Clots In Professional Athletes: Who Else Has Faced A Pulmonary Embolism Diagnosis?
This, of course, isn’t the first time a world champion athlete has faced this sort of diagnosis. NBA superstar and Olympic gold medalist Chris Bosh, a member of the triumvirate that led the Miami Heat to NBA championships alongside LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, experienced a pulmonary embolism in 2015. Recurrent blood-clotting problems ultimately brought Bosh’s playing career to an end. Other athletes with a history of blood clotting issues include tennis superstar Serena Williams and NBA megastars Damian Lillard and Victor Wembanyama.
Suing The Eagles For Medical Malpractice: Can Jalen Hurts Take His Own Team To Court?
Although questions remain about the timeline of Hurts’ initial blood clot diagnosis and the subsequent discovery of pulmonary emboli, the law governing whether he can sue the Eagles is no clearer.
As a medical malpractice lawyer with experiencing representing hospitals and doctors before I began representing individuals and families in high-value catastrophic injury cases, I immediately recognized that it wouldn’t be easy for Hurts to sue anyone affiliated with the Eagles, especially for medical malpractice.
The first question may be the most consequential: Was Hurts receiving medical care from the Eagles as an employee or as a patient?
The distinction is important. In Pennsylvania, employers and employees resolve injury disputes pursuant to their employment agreements or Pennsylvania’s workers’ compensation laws.
Team Doctors In Pennsylvania: How Is An Employer’s Physician Different From Your Own Doctor?
Hurts’ relationship with the Eagles’ team doctors is not the same kind of relationship you or I might have with our primary care physician.
For example, if you undergo a physical examination as part of your employment, there is not a traditional doctor-patient relationship like when you go see your own physician. The results of diagnostic tests required by the employer, like an eye exam or a non-stress test, will be shared with your employer. That would never happen without your consent in a traditional doctor-patient relationship because of patient privacy laws like HIPAA.
In that setting, there is also a contract between the employer and the doctor—but not between the doctor and the employee. That contract may “indemnify” the doctor from liability. In other words, the employer may agree to take the blame for the doctor if something goes wrong, and the employee’s dispute will be handled by any contract between the employer and employee. Essentially, the negligent health care might be considered a part of your employment and subject to workers’ compensation laws instead of traditional medical malpractice laws.
Workers’ Compensation In Pennsylvania: Why Can’t You Usually Sue Your Employer For A Work Injury?
Workers’ compensation laws are important; they protect workers by making it easier for workers to be compensated for injuries caused by their employment. Workers’ compensation laws also protect employers by making the compensation owed to injured employees more predictable.
As a result of workers’ compensation laws, you typically cannot sue your employer for a work-related injury. Instead, you file a claim similar to when you file an insurance claim with your own auto or home insurance company. There are no jury trials in the workers’ compensation system, and the system moves much more quickly than the hotly-contested jury trial system. However, compensation in the workers’ compensation arena is much lower than what you can win from a jury and do not account for the broad areas of damages an individual suffers when they are injured at work. Caps on workers’ compensation rarely approach the sort of money an NFL player earns on the field.
The NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement: How Does It Control Injury Claims For Players?
For Hurts, there is an employment agreement that guides the injury claims process. The NFL Players’ Association, which is the union representing NFL players, maintains a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the NFL that requires each NFL team to have workers’ compensation protections for players that are injured on the job. The CBA does not provide for medical malpractice claims between the employers (the teams) and the employees (the players). The CBA also requires arbitration for most, if not all, claims between the employer-teams and the employee-players.
The fairness of the CBA is often debated given the prevalence of injuries in the NFL. There are numerous stories of players suffering from work-related injuries that cause extreme financial hardship after their playing careers end because of the relatively minimal financial assistance offered to injured and disabled players.
For example, in 2015, then-Eagles linebacker Emmanuel Acho fractured his thumb during an Eagles practice. Immediately after he underwent surgery for his thumb, the Eagles released him. The team eventually paid him a severance according to the CBA, which was only three weeks’ of his NFL salary. Acho never played another game in the NFL and eventually began working as a TV sports commentator. Acho filed for workers’ compensation disability benefits, arguing that his injury was the cause of his NFL work limitations. A judge approved him for workers’ compensation disability benefits from the Eagles for approximately four years.
NFL Player Malpractice Lawsuits In Philadelphia: Who Have Injured Players Been Able To Sue?
Compare Acho’s workers’ compensation case with three lawsuits centered in Philadelphia involving NFL players.
Former Philadelphia Eagle Christopher Maragos sued the Rothman Institute, a prominent Philadelphia-based orthopedic practice that was formerly branded as the “Official Team Physicians” of the Eagles until 2024. Maragos alleged that the Institute and a Pittsburgh-based surgeon committed medical malpractice by mismanaging a knee injury he suffered during a regular-season NFL game.
Notably, Maragos did not pursue claims against the individual Eagles team physicians. He did sue the physicians’ employer, the Rothman Institute. The Pittsburgh-based surgeon was the team doctor for the Pittsburgh Steelers, but none of the defendants were Eagles employees. It is not clear why the individual physicians who worked with the Eagles were not defendants because the case included claims that they committed malpractice.
In the end, a Philadelphia jury awarded Maragos $43.5 million and the defendants were neither Maragos’ employer nor employees of the Eagles. That may have been because workers’ compensation laws and the Maragos’ contract with the Eagles prohibited him from suing his employer and coworkers.
Just last week, a lawsuit was filed by former NFL player David Bell. Bell sued Jefferson Health and the Vincera Institute, both based in Philadelphia, for more than $300 million, alleging that medical malpractice prematurely ended his NFL career.
Bell dislocated his hip during a game in December 2024. Due to pain from the injury, Bell allegedly consulted surgeons at the Vincera Institute for a “core muscle repair” procedure. Bell alleges in his complaint that he expected to undergo a relatively low-risk outpatient procedure. Bell further alleged that instead of the low-risk procedure, he was nearly killed by a “non-indicated surgery he was duped into having” that “ended his promising NFL career” when he suffered a severed femoral artery requiring emergency vascular reconstruction.
The doctors and health systems Bell sued are not affiliated with Bell’s former employer, the Cleveland Browns. Bell even alleges in his complaint that the Cleveland Browns’ medical personnel believed that he was recovering well from his injury without the core muscle repair surgery. This is another example of a medical malpractice case brought by a player that does not include his employer as a defendant.
The NFL Concussion Litigation: How Did Players Sue The League Instead Of Their Teams?
One of the best-known medical negligence cases involving injured NFL players also has a Philadelphia connection. In 2011, Philadelphia lawyers sued the NFL on behalf of thousands of NFL players in what would become a multidistrict litigation titled “In re: National Football League Players’ Concussion Injury Litigation.” The Honorable Anita B. Brody, a federal judge sitting in Philadelphia, oversaw the litigation right at the federal courthouse at 6th and Market .
The lawsuit alleged that the NFL knew that football caused catastrophic and debilitating brain injuries and that the NFL covered up those risks and refused to take steps to make the game safer.
More than 5,000 former NFL players brought claims against the league. The resulting settlement has paid more than $1 billion in compensation to former players. The lawsuit claimed that the NFL and team doctors committed malpractice at the direction of an unspoken NFL policy that put profits over the safety of the NFL’s employees: the players.
If the players are employees, why were they able to sue the NFL instead of being forced to file claims under workers’ compensation laws?
One argument was that the NFL was the defendant — not the players’ employers, which are the teams. The NFL is the corporate umbrella and trade association that governs the sport of professional football in the United States. It manages television, media, and intellectual property rights of the collective organization, handles disputes between teams, organizes the schedule and playoffs, and sets broad policies for each team to abide by. But the NFL does not employ the players. The teams do. So, it follows that the player-employees would be allowed to file a claim against the NFL outside the workers’ compensation system given the NFL’s control over the game and its establishment of health and safety rules for players through its member franchises.
So instead of filing claims against their teams, the players sued the NFL and the NFL entered into a settlement with the players. This nuance may seem like semantics, but lawsuits and justice often are decided by the interpretation of simple concepts like “who is my actual employer?” The teams were the employer but they were controlled, to an extent, by the NFL and that opened the NFL up to liability.
Jalen Hurts’ Legal Options: What Claims Could Still Be Worth Investigating?
So, to the many disgruntled Eagles fans imploring Philadelphia’s trial attorneys and medical malpractice plaintiffs’ lawyers to prepare for war against the Philadelphia Eagles, it is unlikely our beloved quarterback can file a lawsuit against his own employer. I am certain superagent, Nicole Lynn, and the team at Rich Paul’s Klutch Sports would have already called one of Philly’s many medical malpractice specialists by now to explore their options if that were the case.
But there are still options left to investigate. For example, it is not clear who performed the ultrasound and provided medical advice to Hurts in London prior to the game. Reports also indicate that Hurts visited a hospital while abroad. Do the laws governing medical malpractice in London allow Hurts to file a lawsuit if the hospital there missed something? That is for a member of the London Bar to answer. Finally, Hurts’ agent and the Eagles put out a joint statement, suggesting that there is less friction between the parties than we might have anticipated. This could mean that Hurts knew of the diagnosis and decided to play through the risk – albeit I am concerned the risk may have been downplayed to him because pulmonary emboli, which are blood clots that have travelled to the lungs, can lead to sudden death.
All in all, I know that we all wish Jalen Hurts a speedy and full recovery. His leadership has inspired us all to be better Philadelphians.
Go Birds.
Disclaimer: This blog is intended for informational purposes only and does not establish an attorney-client relationship. It should not be considered as legal advice. For personalized legal assistance, please consult our team directly.