Family of deceased football player agrees to settlement

By Lance Pugmire of The Los Angeles Times

The family of late Northwestern football player Rashidi Wheeler has agreed to a financial settlement with three makers and distributors of the ephedra-containing products the player ingested in the hours before he collapsed and died on the practice field in 2001.

Court documents show that Wheeler’s family agreed to accept $75,000 — equal payments of $25,000 from GNC, Phoenix Laboratories and Nutraquest, Inc., companies that made and sold Xenadrine RFA-1 tablets and drinks called Ultimate Punch and Ultimate Orange, all of which contained ephedra.

The settlement is subject to a federal judge’s discretion. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Nov.

1 in U.S. bankruptcy court in Trenton, N.J. Attorneys for the family could not be reached for comment.

On Aug. 3, 2001, Wheeler, 22, a Northwestern senior safety from La Verne Damien High, collapsed during a rigorous set of football-related wind sprints in Evanston, Ill., dying minutes later.

The Cook County, Ill., medical examiner found the death was caused by exercise-induced bronchial asthma, and Wheeler’s family filed a wrongful death suit against Northwestern for forcing the player to submit to such an intense drill during an NCAA-mandated voluntary workout period.

Northwestern alleges that the ephedra caused Wheeler to suffer a fatal heart attack, consistent with later findings from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which earlier this year banned the sale of such products.

Northwestern named the ephedra product makers and distributors as third-party defendants in the Wheeler family suit, meaning the ephedra companies would be subject to financial responsibility if a jury ruled that Wheeler suffered a wrongful death.

In January, the Wheeler vs. Northwestern case was consolidated in the federal bankruptcy court in New Jersey as part of dozens of other suits naming Nutraquest as a defendant. U.S. District Judge Garrett Brown will rule if the settlement will stand. If the settlement is approved, the case will be moved back to Chicago.

Northwestern appealed the settlement Tuesday.

Eric Quandt, the university’s attorney, said settling with the ephedra makers for such a “paltry sum” was “an inequitable shifting of potential liability, when we know darn well that the claims in this case will be in the millions of dollars, if not the tens of millions.”

He added: “To forever discharge the ephedra companies would be a big mistake.”