A former UCLA football player who sued the University of California regents, the NCAA, former UCLA Coach Jim Mora and other members of Mora’s coaching and training staff for injuries he says he suffered while playing for the Bruins has reached a settlement in his case.
Poasi Moala played offensive tackle, tight end, fullback and guard for he Bruins in 2013-16. His attorney, Pamela Tahim Thakur, filed a notice of “conditional” settlement on Friday with Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Elaine W. Mandel. No terms were divulged.
“I was belittled for my complaints by my coaches and trainers and by other players who took their cue from them, and I received no meaningful attention to address my hip injuries,” Moala said in a sworn declaration.
Moala and other ex-UCLA players brought separate, but similar suits against most of the same defendants in May 2019, including Zachary Bateman and John Lopez. Bateman played offensive tackle for UCLA in 2015-17, while Lopez played the same position in 2013-16.
A UCLA representative issued a statement in 2019 regarding the lawsuits.
“While we cannot comment on the specific details of a pending lawsuit, we want to make it clear that the health and safety of our student-athletes is UCLA’s top priority,” the statement read. “We strongly deny and will defend ourselves against the allegations made in the lawsuit. We handle every injury with the highest standard of care. Our team physicians and sports medicine staff work hand-in-hand on diagnosis, monitoring and treatment, and they are the only individuals who determine when a student-athlete is cleared to participate in their sport; coaches are not involved in these decisions.”
In their court papers, NCAA attorneys stated the organization did not owe a “legally-cognizable duty” to Moala and had “no direct oversight or control over student-athletes.”
Moala’s suit stated he suffered concussions and hip injuries from “repeated hits to the head from man-on-man contact of repetitive hitting and head-to-head contact.”
Moala complained about pain in his hips to his coaches and trainers, but they told him each time that his hips were just “tight” and that if he should just stretch and roll them out the pain would go away, the Moala suit stated.
Player concussions were not treated with the appropriate concern at UCLA, the Moala suit alleged.
“The team’s punishing practice regime left no time for Moala to recover from any of the post-concussion symptoms he experienced and the team’s supposed post-concussion protocol was well-known to the players to be just for show and was not followed in any meaningful way by the coaches and trainers,” the Moala suit alleged.
“When I started playing football for the Bruins, I was mentally and physically fit with no history of prior injury,” Moala further said in his declaration.
At Moala’s first summer training camp with UCLA in August 2013, after taking numerous hits to the head in practice drills in the 95-degree-and-above heat, some of his teammates noticed he was acting strangely, according to Moala.
“I am certain that I suffered other concussions in addition to the documented two concussions during the time I played for UCLA… because I took more hits than I could count to my head during practice…,” Moala says, adding, “I believed Coaches Mora and (Adrian) Klemm when they told me and my parents they would look out for my health and safety.”