$200,000 Judgment for Parents of UCF Football Player Who Died After Conditioning Drills

Ereck Plancher was a 19-year-old wide receiver on the University of Central Florida football team. On March 18, 2008, he collapsed after an offseason conditioning workout at the team's football complex in Orlando and died. Medical examiners attributed his death to complications of sickle cell trait.

His parents, Enock and Gisele Plancher, sued the UCF Athletics Association for wrongful death. They were represented at trial by Steve Yerrid of Tampa. The claim was that the staff pushed Plancher through harsh drills and did not do everything possible to save him once he was in distress.

The case was tried before an Orange County jury. The association argued that Plancher had signed a medical release and that its staff had acted properly. After about five hours of deliberation in late June 2011, jurors found the association negligent and concluded it had failed to do everything possible to save Plancher's life. They did not find clear and convincing evidence of gross negligence, so no punitive damages were awarded. They awarded $5 million to each parent, $10 million in all. UCF said it would appeal.

The Fifth District Court of Appeal decided the appeal on August 16, 2013. It rejected UCF's request for a new trial, including its complaint about the time limits placed on the presentation of its case, and held that the release Plancher signed was not an express waiver of his family's right to sue. The verdict of liability stood.

The court then addressed the amount. It concluded that the Athletics Association was entitled to limited sovereign immunity because of the state's control over it, and it reduced the judgment to $200,000 under section 768.28(5) of the Florida Statutes. Any larger recovery against a state entity under that statute requires an act of the Legislature. The court also reversed a trial court award of attorney's fees and costs to the family, finding no entitlement to it under section 768.79.

Judge Wendy Berger, writing separately, said it was difficult to comprehend how one human being could ignore another in obvious distress or prevent someone else from offering aid. The family took the case to the Florida Supreme Court. On May 28, 2015, that court agreed that the Athletics Association acted as an instrumentality of the state and was entitled to limited sovereign immunity, and it sent the case back for a judgment matching the jury's award but limiting the association's liability to $200,000. The court noted that the family could ask the Legislature to pay more through a claim bill. Yerrid said the family was disappointed and warned that universities could now hand student-athlete safety to private corporations that answer to no one.