Alex Mckinnon To Sue

[Perth Red]

Agreed, that's why I said I don't blame him, but for the good of sport and accepting personal responsibility for risk taking these cases, leaving aside the person, are screwing things.

We had much debate at work this year if we should have alcohol at the Xmas party due to the number of litigation cases of employees getting drunk, being a dck then suing the company.

At some point if you are going to partake in a high risk activity you have to accept it could go t1ts up and you could get injured. Its terrible when it does and it was great to see the nrl and rl,community rally around Alex when it happened but it was an accident, there is an element of inevitability that those tackles occasionally occur and if you decide to play RL it is a risk you are taking.

Anyways good luck to him if he wins the $20mill, wouldn't begrudge him it, just fear for where this slope continues takes us as a society.

 

[lockyno1]

As he should. The NRL were very negligent and McKLean committed the offence he plead guilty to at the tribunal. Players should be more careful.

 

[carcharias]

getting pissed at a work function and falling over.... and ending up a cripple through an illegal tackle on a rugby league field are now the same???

 

[El Diablo]

Anyways good luck to him if he wins the $20mill, wouldn't begrudge him it, just fear for where this slope continues takes us as a society.

if he successfully got that from the NRL then it would drive insurance prices up for all sports at all levels of the game

 

[El Diablo]

The NRL were very negligent

how?

 

[McNulty]

Should Sue Melb. Their tackling and Grappling tactics are the cause. Bound to happen

 

[Danish]

i can't possibly see how he could sue the NRL as there is nothing they could to that would have prevented it

i can see how he could successfully sue McLean though seeing players have sued other players before

McCracken http://www.smh.com.au/news/league/l...000-over-tackle/2006/11/23/1163871523845.html

Gary Jack sued Ian Robers and Brohman sued Boyd

You could pretty easily argue that the NRL had taken a very lax view on lifting tackles for a long time, even after multiple players have had their necks broken over the years.

There hasn't been sent off for a spear tackle in over a decade, for example.

If the NRL took the same hardline stance on lifting tackles as they did on shoulder charges I can't imagine any player would risk lifting in the tackle. Why they haven't is honestly baffling to me as lifting tackles have much more risk involved than f**king shoulders

 

[Spot On]

Ummm, not attempting to compare the McKinnon case AT ALL but a only recently a woman who slipped on a grape at Coles was awarded 90K.

For slipping on a grape.

This is the world we live in.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...s/news-story/4cfd97c0f54e4113ddaa48a5b099d1c8

Be careful of those grapes ladies and gentlemen.

 

[Bazal]

Agreed, that's why I said I don't blame him, but for the good of sport and accepting personal responsibility for risk taking these cases, leaving aside the person, are screwing things.

We had much debate at work this year if we should have alcohol at the Xmas party due to the number of litigation cases of employees getting drunk, being a dck then suing the company.

At some point if you are going to partake in a high risk activity you have to accept it could go t1ts up and you could get injured. Its terrible when it does and it was great to see the nrl and rl,community rally around Alex when it happened but it was an accident, there is an element of inevitability that those tackles occasionally occur and if you decide to play RL it is a risk you are taking.

Anyways good luck to him if he wins the $20mill, wouldn't begrudge him it, just fear for where this slope continues takes us as a society.

Yeah? Let's say you're a construction worker and some muppet doesn't appropriately tie a strap. A load of roof tiles shifts and falls, leaving you a quadriplegic. Would you be suing for appropriate compensation? I sure as f**k would....

It's not a whole lot different. The negligence of an employee (Maclean) and by extension his employer (The NRL) has caused a serious injury. McKinnon deserves compensation for that.

Plus construction is a much more dangerous industry than the Nrl. Should injured construction workers just "accept the risk"?

 

[carcharias]

he was dropped on his head.
It was atrocious.
never walk again.

 

[Perth Red]

getting pissed at a work function and falling over.... and ending up a cripple through an illegal tackle on a rugby league field are now the same???

In the eyes of the law if suing for negligence of an employer, very similiar.

 

[DiegoNT]

It's easy to say Mclean was found guilty at judiciary therefore it's fair he's being sued, but i don't think he ever got a fair chance in that case. He was going to cop a huge suspension any way it happened (because of nrl's kneejerk reactions), if he fought the charge it would have looked trivial and disrespectful to fight the charge while the opposite player was laying in hospital. He was a young player that couldn't cop a huge suspension. If he knew he'd eventually be sued over the incident i don't think he would have plead guilty.
A forgetten thing about this incident is a rule change that the nrl brought in for 2014. They brought in a rule change that a tackler couldn't wrap a players legs up if there where already other players in the tackle. It was like a continuation of the cannonball tackle rule except it lacked commonsense. Without being able to wrap the legs up players could continue and keep makinh huge metres. In the first game of the year george burgess carried 3 roosters defenders ( a great defensive team at that) 20metres before a roosters player got sick of it and wrapped his legs up and was promptly penalised for it. It was a stupid rule that saw a rise in lifting tackles to slow players down until eventually this tragic accident happened. Then the rule was virtually ignored overnight after the McKinnon tackle.
The bizarre thing about the rule was that it was championed by Wayne Bennett, because Alex Mcinnon had been injured in a legs wrapping tackle in a 2013 game.

 

[carcharias]

In the eyes of the law if suing for negligence of an employer, very similiar.

I'd guess you're pissed right now at work.

A spinal injury from an illegal act on a footy field and hurting yourself while pissed at a party is vastly different.

He should sue .
It is not up to him to stop blokes breaking his neck while supplying the NRL's their product.

 

[mxlegend99]

Haha fat fingers on an iPad. But yes he could be letting "loose" a whole can of worms. How many injuries, all be it not as serious, do we see across sport due to foul play? Are we saying it is ok to sue for them all or just the serious ones?

he got nearly $3mill and a job for life whilst others are managing on ndis so it's not like he hasn't been looked after by the game is it?

This is why I don't agree with McKinnon here.

Every player knows it's a dangerous game. It's a risk they choose to take. The NRL looked after him after his injury. He had a ridiculous amount of money raised for him. He was guaranteed a job for life. Now he wants to sue as if he was unaware of the risks and as if the NRL could somehow prevent it.

Its an unfortunate situation for sure. But it's a dangerous sport and these guys choose to play it knowing that their bodies are on the line. Even being an illegal tackle... every player has been on both ends of those. The speed at which the game is played makes it impossible to eliminate them altogether. Multiple players tackling one person and each having fractions of a second to make decisions... things will go wrong on occasion.

 

[jaseg]

He's got almost no chance of winning either lawsuit.

Against the NRL? Forget it. Unless he can prove that they could conceivably see a catastrophic (and this is key: preventable by NRL policy) injury happening and failed to act, they've not done anything wrong. Given that the type of tackle is against the rules of the game and that the injury was caused an extremely unlikely (and unforeseeable) combination of factors that came together in exactly the worst way (in laymans terms, a freak accident)... nope.

Against McLean he has a (slightly) better chance, but just because the tackle was against the rules of the game doesn't give him the right to compensation either. There is a legal understanding that rules on the sporting field will be broken from time to time, and the offense would have to be well above and beyond just breaking the rules into serious negligence.

A key part of proving negligence is that something like be reasonably foreseeable. He's going to struggle mightily here because there were so many factors that were significant to the outcome. McCracken's case is not comparable at all - that was an outright spear tackle... the potential for catastrophic injury is much more foreseeable.

His lawyers will be playing hard for a settlement... either that, or they're absolute scumbags using the situation to get their name out there.

As for the timing, no idea if he was waiting until his NRL contract had finished up or not (it only recently did), but any action would have needed to be taken by mid/end of March (whenever the game was) next year due to the limitation act.

 

[El Diablo]

You could pretty easily argue that the NRL had taken a very lax view on lifting tackles for a long time, even after multiple players have had their necks broken over the years.

There hasn't been sent off for a spear tackle in over a decade, for example.

If the NRL took the same hardline stance on lifting tackles as they did on shoulder charges I can't imagine any player would risk lifting in the tackle. Why they haven't is honestly baffling to me as lifting tackles have much more risk involved than f**king shoulders

i disagree and even if there were harsher penalties i can't see how it would prevent it from happening

it wasn't intentional just an accident

 

[Perth Red]

Was it negligent or an accident? That is what they will determine, though it will in all likelihood be paid out before it gets that far.

These tackles, like other illegal tackles, may be impossible to totally eliminate from the game, how many do we see, plenty still. If a player ending up quad doesn't deter players from doing it, on top of suspensions and fines maybe accidents happen in high collision sport and these tackles are part of the risk of playing? Sure minimise the risk as much as possible but do you really believe the game can be played with no one ever being lifted past the horizontal? Or head high hit? That will be the next thing, head high tackles gave me dementia and I'm suing the nrl.

 

[El Diablo]

It's not a whole lot different.

that's a terrible analogy

eg http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-01-31/quadriplegic-footballer-loses-compo-bid/1028648

 

[natheel]

Dog act blaming McClean

I'd say it's just a tactic by his lawyer for the NRL to say "we will settle if you drop the lawsuit v McLean

 

[betcats]

This is why I don't agree with McKinnon here.

Every player knows it's a dangerous game. It's a risk they choose to take. The NRL looked after him after his injury. He had a ridiculous amount of money raised for him. He was guaranteed a job for life. Now he wants to sue as if he was unaware of the risks and as if the NRL could somehow prevent it.

Its an unfortunate situation for sure. But it's a dangerous sport and these guys choose to play it knowing that their bodies are on the line. Even being an illegal tackle... every player has been on both ends of those. The speed at which the game is played makes it impossible to eliminate them altogether. Multiple players tackling one person and each having fractions of a second to make decisions... things will go wrong on occasion.

Mate try sitting in a wheelchair in your early 20s knowing you will be stuck there for the rest of your life not being able to look after yourself at all, knowing you are there as a result of an illegal tackle and now try accepting that "things will go wrong" and just moving on. It would take a very special personality to sit there and not blame anyone because they knew the risks, imo 99 percent of us would be doing the exact same or worse despite the initial outpouring of emotions and aid for McKinnon it would be pretty f**king tough for him not to take this option if he has people close to him advising him he can get something out of it.