Father blames football helmet makers, school for son’s death

Craddock says his son died in August 2024 because of a helmet that “failed to perform as a reasonably safe football helmet should” during a routine Madison Middle School football practice.

“This terrible tragedy was entirely preventable,” attorney Ben Salango told The West Virginia Record. “Cohen Craddock was only 13 years old. He had his entire life ahead of him. We intend to get justice for this family.”

According to the complaint, Cohen was issued a Schutt Vengeance A3 youth football helmet whose “initial season was in 2017” and which was required to undergo “annual recertification.” The suit says by 2017, “the Vengeance A3 helmet was not state of the art” and the Vengeance line was “demonstrably obsolete.” I also says in 2018 “the NFL blacklisted the Schutt Vengeance helmet due to poor safety performance.”

The complaint alleges “Defendant Schutt has known – for years – that the Vengeance line of helmets is defective and does not adequately protect the brains of adolescents – the very population targeted by much of Defendant Schutt’s marketing and sales efforts.”

It further claims studies “repeatedly demonstrated the inadequate performance of the Vengeance line of helmets,” yet Schutt and Riddell “took no action to recall the helmet, adequately warn about the helmet’s defects, or remove the helmet from use.”

Ahead of the 2024 season, the Boone County Board of Education hired Riddell to inspect and recondition all football helmets used by Madison Middle School players, according to the filing.

“Despite no indication that defendant Riddell tested the subject helmet, defendant Riddell recertified it and returned it to defendant BCBOE to be used by its student-athletes,” the complaint states, adding Riddell “made no effort to warn or inform” the board the Vengeance A3 “was obsolete and comparatively unsafe.”

The complaint says the school board was negligent by providing Cohen “with a seven-year-old football helmet that exceeded its safe service life” and by “relying blindly on the false assurance of ‘recertification’ without investigating what that process entailed or omitted.”

The suit also notes Cohen “complained to his coaches that the subject helmet was uncomfortable, but he was not provided with a different helmet.” It also alleges the school board “failed to ensure (Cohen) was provided with a safe and properly fitting football helmet while offering no alternative option.”

The complaint also details the events of the August 24, 2024, practice.

“Following a routine play from scrimmage in which the opposing linemen made unremarkable lineman-to-lineman contact, C.C. fell, causing his helmet to strike the ground,” the complaint states. “The helmet allowed those forces to be transmitted directly to (Cohen’s) brain.”

According to the complaint, the helmet was “dangerously inflexible” and “incapable of effectively attenuating impact energies. It says Cohen “died that same day from blunt force injuries to the head.”

The lawsuit asserts strict liability and negligence claims against Schutt, Certor and Kranos, alleging the Vengeance A3 was “obsolete, defective, and/or not reasonably safe for its intended use” and that safer alternative designs “were economically and technologically feasible at all times relevant.”

It claims a reasonably prudent manufacturer should have warned of the helmet’s hazards and of “the availability of measurably better alternative helmets,” adding that “the consequences of not providing the aforementioned warning and notice imperils the wellbeing of children, and the sole purpose of this product is protection.”

Separate negligence counts target Riddell for allegedly “failing to adequately warn consumers – including Cohen – that recertification does not ensure the effectiveness of a football helmet” and for “failing to remove the obsolete Schutt Vengeance A3 football helmet it knew or should have known was obsolete.”

The complaint also accuses the school board of knowing or having reason to know that its helmets “were aged, worn, degraded and potentially unsafe” while failing “to remove obsolete helmets from circulation.”

Ryan Craddock seeks damages under West Virginia’s wrongful death statutes for Cohen’s “pain and suffering from the time of injury to death,” the family’s “sorrow, mental anguish, and solace,” loss of companionship and services and for medical and funeral expenses. He also seeks punitive damages based on “conscious, reckless and outrageous indifference” by the defendants as well as interest, court costs, attorney fees and other relief.

Craddock is being represented by Salango of Salango Law in Charleston as well as by L. Lee Javins II, Taylor M. Norman and Adam S. Daugherty of Bailey Javins & Carter in Charleston.

Boone Circuit Court case number 26-C-35