Family of Injured Football Player Sues Highlands School District

PITTSBURGH, April 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The law firm of Robert Peirce & Associates, P.C. today announced that it has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Zachary Alt against Highlands School District, school administrators, head football coach Sam Albert and trainer Mike Russo.  

The lawsuit, filed today in the Federal District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania as Docket #2:11-cv-00468-LPL, claims that the Highlands High School football coach and trainer disregarded Alt's head injuries, leading to serious and potentially permanent injuries.

According to the lawsuit Alt, a former varsity high school football player at Highlands High School, sustained as many as three football related concussions over a period of less than one month in the fall of 2007.  Despite suffering from this series of concussions, Alt was sent back out onto on the field of play, even after he sustained his third and most significant traumatic head injury on November 9, 2007.

The lawsuit alleges that Alt continues to suffer from "significant cognitive deficiencies" as a result of this series of concussions.  The lawsuit also claims that Highlands Head Football Coach Sam Albert elected to disregard multiple warnings by several of Alt's teammates during the November 9, 2007 football game. After Alt sustained the third head injury on November 9, 2007, he was forced back into the game at the fullback position, and instructed to "blow him up", referring to the type of hit Coach Albert demanded Alt deliver to the opposing middle linebacker.  

After sustaining this series of traumatic brain injuries, Alt attempted to return to school at full capacity but was unable to do so because of his inability to concentrate on his studies.  According to the Complaint, Alt and his family made multiple requests for accommodations but those requests were essentially disregarded.  To the contrary, it is alleged that the District intentionally overlooked Alt's academic and attendance issues so as to pass him through from tenth grade until graduation. In fact, during one meeting between Alt's family and Principal Thomas Shirey, it is alleged that Shirey suggested that he could simply "shake his magic wand" as a solution to Alt's academic and attendance problems at school.  

As a result of Highlands' head coach's and trainer's failure to recognize and monitor Alt's traumatic brain injuries and the District's subsequent failure to provide an appropriate education, Zachary Alt sustained serious, grievous and potentially permanent injuries.

SOURCE Robert Peirce & Associates, P.C.