Retired NFL players sue their union

Already mired in an ongoing legal drama with NFL owners, the players' union has been sacked with a federal lawsuit brought by some retired athletes.

Five former stars claim the NFL Players Association and its for-profit Players Inc. subsidiary defrauded thousands of former players of lucrative royalties when video games, apparel companies, football-card manufacturers and others used their images.

The class-action lawsuit was filed Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles but has gone relatively unnoticed.

"We're just getting started," said former Cleveland Browns defensive back Bernie Parrish. "We're going to finish the fight we started in 2007."

The lawsuit arrives while the union says it no longer exists. Shortly before the 32 NFL owners instituted a nationwide lockout March 11, the union decertified, a strategy that allowed active players to sue the NFL as an illegal monopoly in federal court.

That case continues in Minnesota while players and owners haggle over wage, safety, drug testing and other issues in court-supervised mediation.

"We are not a union," Players Association spokesman Carl Francis said. "So as to how the case will be handled, I am not sure."

Parrish was a lead plaintiff in a 2007 lawsuit that claimed the union had breached its fiduciary duty to retired players who signed group licensing agreements. Those agreements let the union shop their likenesses -- especially to EA Sports, manufacturer of the popular Madden Football series of video games -- but a jury found that officials failed to pay all the players who inked them.n

More than 2,000 of those ex-players agreed in 2009 to a $26.2 million settlement. Parrish, however, was stripped from the case because he hadn't signed a licensing agreement.

He and the other plaintiffs in the current lawsuit -- former Baltimore Colts linebacker Bob Grant, Minnesota Vikings running back Clinton Jones, Washington Redskins receiver Walter Roberts III and Cincinnati Bengals safety Marvin Cobb -- estimate that 15,000 former players also never signed agreements with the union but deserve royalties.