$100 Million Settlement Ends Ohio State's Strauss Abuse Litigation, Covering Nearly 280 Survivors
Won by Estey & Bomberger.
Ohio State University agreed to pay $100 million to 279 of 280 remaining plaintiffs who sued the university over decades of sexual abuse by former team physician Dr. Richard Strauss; Estey and Bomberger was among co-counsel firms representing survivors.
What happened
For nearly two decades, Dr. Richard Strauss worked as a sports medicine physician and team doctor at Ohio State University, conducting medical examinations of student athletes and clinic patients. According to a 2019 independent investigation commissioned by the university, Strauss sexually abused at least 177 male victims between 1978 and 1998. The same investigation found that university officials were made aware of concerns about his conduct as early as 1979 and took no meaningful action. Strauss retired in 1998 and died by suicide in 2005.
Lawsuits began accumulating against Ohio State starting in 2018, when survivors including former football players and other student athletes came forward publicly. The cases were filed as individual and class actions in the Southern District of Ohio, consolidating before Judge Michael H. Watson. Among the plaintiff firms that joined the litigation from early on was Estey and Bomberger of San Diego, with Stephen J. Estey appearing as counsel of record in Gonzales et al. v. The Ohio State University (Case No. 2:23-cv-03051, S.D. Ohio). Estey's group represented clients including Brian Garrett, one of the most publicly outspoken survivors, who said the university had failed victims not only through Strauss but through subsequent legal resistance.
Over multiple years, Ohio State reached a series of partial settlements. By early 2026, the university had resolved claims with more than 300 survivors for over $60 million across six prior agreements. The remaining approximately 280 plaintiffs, whose cases were scheduled for bellwether trials in October 2026, held out for a larger resolution. In February and April 2026, Ohio State settled a handful of additional individual cases, but the bulk of the litigation remained active.
On June 3, 2026, Ohio State's Board of Trustees voted unanimously to ratify settlement agreements in principle with 279 of 280 remaining plaintiffs for $100 million total. One individual had not agreed to the terms at the time of the board vote. The resolution ended the active federal docket. Combined with earlier rounds, the university's total payout across all Strauss-related civil litigation exceeded $160 million.
The settlement closed a case built on evidence that institutional inaction stretched across multiple administrations and departments. Survivors who persisted through years of statute-of-limitations challenges, appeals, and mediation proceedings that attorneys described as unproductive at various stages eventually secured one of the largest institutional sexual-abuse settlements in college sports history.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Estey & Bomberger
All Estey & Bomberger proven verdicts →A Los Angeles judge awarded $60 million to three female taekwondo athletes who were sexually abused by their coach for seven years, a case that later prompted the California Supreme Court to hold that national sports governing bodies owe a legal duty to protect athletes from abuse.
A Santa Clara County jury awarded $30 million to a man who endured years of sexual abuse as a foster child, finding the Giarretto Institute 75 percent responsible for licensing and failing to monitor the Mountain View home where the abuse occurred.
A Los Angeles jury awarded $23 million in December 2012 after finding that LAUSD ignored repeated warning signs while a fifth-grade teacher molested a ten-year-old student dozens of times over the course of a school year.
A Southern California hospital agreed to the largest medical malpractice settlement in California history after a NICU nursing error with a feeding machine caused glucose overload and permanent brain damage in a five-week-premature newborn.
Related sexual abuse verdicts
A Riverside County jury awarded $2.28 billion on April 25, 2023, to a woman identified as Jane Doe who was sexually abused by her stepfather from age 5 until she was 14, at the family's Lake Elsinore home and at events and property of the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The stepfather, who had pleaded guilty in 1997 to lewd acts with a child under 14 and served three years in state prison, admitted the abuse at deposition, then skipped the first day of jury selection and withdrew his answer rather than face a bench warrant. The church settled for $1 million and the mother for $200,000 before trial. The verdict, $836 million in compensatory damages and $1.44 billion in punitive damages after three days of deliberation, is one of the largest ever returned for a single survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
A Rio Arriba County jury held Acadia Healthcare and its New Mexico foster care subsidiaries responsible for placing an 8-year-old girl with a foster father who raped her repeatedly, returning one of the largest single-plaintiff sexual abuse verdicts in the country.
A St. Charles County judge entered a $300 million bench-trial judgment for a child, identified only as G.T., who was physically and sexually abused between the ages of three and five while in the care of Susan and James McLaurie, though one defendant died before the suit was filed and the only known insurance was a $303,000 policy.
A St. Charles County jury awarded $247.3 million to six women sexually assaulted by an unlicensed massage therapist at Oasis Foot Spa & Massage in St. Peters, finding the spa and its owner liable for hiring him without any background check and ignoring an early complaint. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in full in 2024.