The Case That Changed the Statute of Limitations for Football Brain Injury Claims

On October 31, 2018, the Ohio Supreme Court issued a decision in NCAA et al. v. Schmitz that reshaped the legal landscape for former college football players across the country. The court held that a player's awareness of in-career head injuries — the hits he took on the field — does not start the clock on a latent brain injury lawsuit. That ruling came directly from work Langfitt PLLC did on behalf of Steven Schmitz, a former Notre Dame linebacker, and it remains one of the most important appellate decisions in the history of NCAA concussion litigation.

What Was at Stake in Schmitz v. NCAA

Steven Schmitz played linebacker at Notre Dame. Like most college football players of his era, he sustained hits throughout his career. Years after his playing days ended, he began experiencing symptoms consistent with latent neurological disease — the kind of slow, progressive damage that does not announce itself at the time of injury and may not surface for a decade or more.

When he filed suit against the NCAA, the defense moved to dismiss his case on statute-of-limitations grounds. Their argument was simple and aggressive: Schmitz knew he was getting hit while he played, so the clock started running during his career. Under that theory, virtually every former player's claim would be time-barred before he ever understood he had one.

The Ohio Supreme Court rejected that argument.

What the Ohio Supreme Court Actually Held

The court applied Ohio's discovery rule to Schmitz's claims and concluded that the limitations period does not begin until a plaintiff discovers — or reasonably should have discovered — both the injury and its cause. Knowing you sustained hits during a football career is not the same as knowing you have a latent brain disease caused by those hits.

The opinion established several principles that now support NCAA brain injury litigation well beyond Ohio:

• A player's knowledge of in-career impacts does not trigger the statute of limitations for a latent neurological injury.
• The clock begins when the player knows or reasonably should know that he has a disease and that football-related trauma caused it.
• Latent CTE and related conditions are legally distinct from the acute concussions a player may have experienced during his career.
• Courts must evaluate what a plaintiff actually could have known — not what a defendant claims he should have assumed.

This was not a procedural technicality. It was a substantive ruling about when former players are legally permitted to seek accountability.

Why This Decision Matters for Former Players Today

The Schmitz opinion directly addressed the most common defense tactic in NCAA brain injury cases: the argument that time has run out. Defense lawyers for the NCAA and member institutions routinely argue that former players waited too long to file — even when those players had no way of knowing they had a compensable injury until symptoms emerged years or decades after their last game.

Under the framework the Ohio Supreme Court articulated, the relevant question is not when you played football. It is when you knew — or reasonably could have known — that you had a latent brain disease connected to the hits you sustained. For many former players, that moment comes with a diagnosis, a conversation with a neurologist, or the recognition that what is happening to their memory and mood is not ordinary aging.

If you or someone in your family has been told that a claim is too old to pursue, that conclusion deserves a second look. The statute of limitations in these cases is more nuanced than most defense lawyers will acknowledge.

How Langfitt PLLC Obtained This Ruling

David Langfitt and the firm's litigation team developed the appellate strategy in Schmitz from the ground up. The case required persuading the Ohio Supreme Court to apply the discovery rule to a category of injury that had no established precedent in that jurisdiction — latent CTE and repetitive-impact neurological disease in former college athletes.

That work produced a published opinion from the highest court in Ohio. It is now cited in briefs, relied on by plaintiffs' lawyers in multiple states, and stands as part of the legal foundation on which subsequent NCAA brain injury litigation — including the $18M Geathers verdict — has been built. Obtaining watershed appellate authority in a case of this kind is not a routine outcome. It reflects the depth of legal and scientific work the firm brought to bear on behalf of Steven Schmitz and, by extension, former players everywhere.

The Connection Between Schmitz and the Cases That Followed

The Schmitz opinion did not exist in isolation. It was one piece of a larger litigation strategy the firm has pursued across multiple states and jurisdictions over more than a decade. The same arguments about latent injury, the discovery rule, and the NCAA's knowledge of long-term harm that were tested and validated in Schmitz appear throughout the firm's subsequent trial work.

When the jury in Orangeburg County, South Carolina returned an $18M verdict in Geathers v. NCAA in October 2025, it did so in a legal environment that Schmitz helped create. The statute-of-limitations framework the firm established in Ohio gave other courts a reasoned basis for allowing former players' claims to proceed. Six additional NCAA cases are now scheduled for trial in the next 18 months, each building on this foundation.

To read about the Geathers verdict and what it means for future cases, visit our Geathers v. NCAA case page.

Frequently Asked Questions About Schmitz v. NCAA and the Discovery Rule