Derek Boogaard's family has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the NHL. In the lawsuit, the family says the league is responsible for the brain damage that Boogaard sustained during six seasons as an enforcer in the league, and for his addiction to prescription painkillers. "To distill this to one sentence, you take a young man, you subject him to trauma, you give him pills for that trauma, he becomes addicted to those pills, you promise to treat him for that addiction, and you fail," Williams Gibbs, a lawyer for the Boogaards, told the New York Times. Boogaard was found dead of an accidental overdose of pain medication and alcohol on May 13, 2011. He was 28. He was posthumously diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain ailment that is caused by repeated blows to the head. "On numerous occasions, the NHL allowed and encouraged Derek Boogaard, after suffering concussions, to return to play and fight in the same game and/or practice," a copy of the suit obtained by the Times read. The NHL has not commented on the lawsuit. Read more http://espn.go.com/nhl/story/_/id/9268298/family-derek-boogaard-files-wrongful-death-lawsuit-nhl
