The Newport-Mesa Unified School District has agreed to pay a former Corona del Mar High School football player $31 million to settle a lawsuit in which the player alleged he suffered traumatic brain injury while practicing on fields negligently maintained by the district.
Newport-Mesa communications, sworn depositions and court records obtained by the Orange County Register, show that top district officials as far back as 2016 received repeated warnings including from CDM football, soccer and lacrosse coaches that the dangerous condition of school district natural grass fields created a risk of head injuries and other injuries by CDM athletes.
Five years after district and school officials were first alerted to the dangerous conditions of district fields, Emanuel “Manny” Garcia, then a 15-year-old CDM freshman football player, suffered a brain injury despite wearing a helmet when he was injured during a practice on March 9, 2021. Garcia, landing on uneven ground, suffered brain bleeding that resulted in “severe cognitive defects and emotional harms,” according to his attorney.
“Manny went from a top student to barely passing and suffered a lifetime of mental, physical, and emotional challenges,” said Jesse Creed, Garcia’s attorney.
“The District has taken responsibility for its failure to address the dangerous conditions of its field that harmed many children for more than a decade,” Creed said. “An unknown danger of high school sports is the hardness of their fields. The NFL and NCAA have regulations and inspection standards, but youth football remains wholly unregulated, exposing our kids to the serious danger of head injuries.”
A CDM coach in a 2016 email to district officials warned that “due to the lack of grass and the lack of watering, the field has become too hard and will directly lead to an increase in head injuries.”
A CDM parent asked the school district to conduct industry-standard testing of field hardness to ensure the fields were safe. Such testing did not happen prior to the 2021 football season, according to Creed.
“I want to thank the football coaches and program for standing by me,” Garcia said in a statement. “Every school district should make sure the football fields are safe to play on so that this terrible thing never happens again.”
This story will be updated.
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