Jerry Jones may have run Schramm out of Valley Ranch, but Tex is his kind of guy.
The Rushmore suit is not the first time Jones has fought paying comp claims by former players--especially those who played before Jones bought the team.
In January 1994, Jones sued John Dutton, Tony Hill, Doug Cosbie, and 13 other ex-Cowboys, claiming they owed him nearly $1 million--money they had been paid through workers comp claims and other insurance settlements by Bum Bright, not Jones. Nonetheless, Jones claimed that the players had already been compensated through their salaries--meaning they had been paid while sitting on the bench, nursing wounds.
"He said they were double-dipping," says Collins, who represented former Cowboy wide receiver Scott Ankrom in a separate lawsuit filed by Jones in 1994. "It's Jerry's favorite phrase, even though he really doesn't understand what it means."
At the time, the players, many of whom were out of work and nearly bankrupt, were galled by Jones' actions. All-Pro lineman Dutton told Jim Dent, author of King of the Cowboys: The Life and Times of Jerry Jones, that Jones was "trying to steal from his former players."
"What an asshole Jerry Jones is," Dutton said.
Curiously, Jones didn't go after Hall of Fame Cowboys who had also collected workers compensation, namely Randy White and Tony Dorsett.
But Jones lost the fight: A California judge ruled that Jones had no right to the players' compensation money--and ordered him to pay an extra 10 percent to the players, in addition to attorneys' fees.
By suing a bunch of forgotten Cowboys for a million bucks--at a time when the franchise was worth an estimated $190 million--Jones looked like a cold businessman quick to spit on the Cowboys' history. Essentially, he admitted that he didn't feel responsible for what had happened before he owned the team.
"He's been trying to find every way he can to avoid paying workers comp claims," Collins says. "He's just a chickenshit, and here's the reason why: Every other team in the league pays legitimate comp claims. Sure, there are some contested cases, but at least with the claims I've handled, Jerry's contested every single one, no matter the validity of the claim, and that's just nonsense."
Ankrom's case sheds insight into the way the Cowboys currently operate regarding workers comp claims. Ankrom, who injured his left knee while playing for the Cowboys in 1989, the first year Jones owned the team, claimed $26,500 in compensation. The team and Gulf Insurance Co., which became the club's insurance carrier under Jones, didn't think he was due the money and convinced a Dallas district judge to rule in their favor.
But the Dallas Court of Appeals overturned the ruling in March 1995 and gave Ankrom his money. Jones ultimately took the case to the Texas Supreme Court, but the court refused to hear it.
Jones keeps workers comp lawyers busy even now: Currently, Collins is representing former Cowboy Mike Ulufale before the Texas Workers Compensation Board. The defensive tackle played last year, but injured his neck during training camp this summer. The Cowboys cut him and tore up his contract--and nullified his workers comp rights, which Collins says is against the law.
Pete Gent, who has made a living out of writing about players' pain, isn't surprised by any of this--the Rushmore lawsuit, the Ulufale case, Jones' 1994 lawsuit against the 16 former Cowboys. To him, it's the same ol' same ol', the price of doing business between the hash marks.
"I've always believed there's an attitude toward ball players that they deserve to get hurt," he says. "And whoever thinks that way doesn't have the faintest idea how we feel.
