BOSTON, MA (WBZ-AM) -- Lawyers for Avielle Hernandez, the 5-year-old daughter of the late former NFL player turned killer Aaron Hernandez, have lost their bid to keep a lawsuit against the league in the Massachusetts court system.
A U.S Judicial panel ruled to instead bundle it with a number of other lawsuits in federal court.
The move is being made above the objections of the plaintiff and in federal court even jurisdictional questions can take years to answer and federal labor court's often push for settlements that prevent facts found in discovery from seeing the light of day.
So George Leontire attorney for five-year-old Avielle Hernandez, is disappointed to see her case heading there.
“It’s a set back to the extent that going to take significantly longer to be able to do the kind of discovery and get to trial we think is necessary in order for full public disclosure of what the NFL has done,” Leontire said.
As for what the league has allegedly done, the suit says it covered up the threat football poses to players brains and that the brain damage Aaron Hernandez suffered deprived Avielle of her father.
Leontire says that's less likely to happen in federal labor court where the goal is to craft an out-of-court settlement.
“The problem with that is for example when the concussion settlement litigation on the class action none of the information about what the NFL did came out so it’s a way to solve the issue for the NFL without coming out clean,” Leontire said.
He says similar cases have been held up for years. he said his team will aggressively push to get this case to trial and through discovery get just what they NFL knew and what it did with its information, into the public eye.
WBZ NewsRadio1030’s Kendall Buhl Reports