SC judge keeps NFL in brain injury lawsuit of ex-player who killed 6 in Rock Hill
A South Carolina judge has denied the National Football League’s request to dismiss a brain injury lawsuit filed by the family of a former player from Rock Hill who killed six people before committing suicide in 2021.
In April 2021, near his parents York County home, deputies said Phillip Adams shot Dr. Robert Lesslie; his wife, Barbara Lesslie; two of their grandchildren, Adah, 9, and Noah, 5; and two HVAC workers at the house, James Lewis and Robert Shook of Gaston County, N.C.
Adams, 32, died later that day after he shot himself as deputies surrounded his parents’ house, the York County sheriff’s office has said.
But after a Boston doctor said in December 2021 that Adams had brain injuries consistent with concussions that could come from football, Adams’ father, Alonzo, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Orangeburg County. The Adams family sued the NFL, NFL Properties, and South Carolina State University, where Phillip Adams played college football.
The lawsuit claims Adams suffered financial and emotional losses from his football injuries. He played in the NFL from 2010 to 2015 with the San Francisco 49ers, New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks, Oakland Raiders, New York Jets and Atlanta Falcons, after starring at S.C. State and Rock Hill High School.
The NFL and S.C. State have denied Adams’ claims of negligence, court documents in the case show.
The NFL and the college both sought to have the case dismissed, but South Carolina state court Judge Charles McCutchen ruled Wednesday the case filed in South Carolina civil court can move forward in Orangeburg County, documents show.
McCutchen ruled that Rock Hill’s Craig Wilkerson and Gedney Howe IV of Charleston, lawyers for the Adams family, showed enough to keep the negligence lawsuit going.
The lawsuit alleges the NFL was “engaging in activity which caused concussion and head trauma to Phillip Matthew Adams and latent neurological damage, illnesses, and decline that arise from those head impacts.”
Wednesday’s ruling in state court comes after a federal judge earlier refused to dismiss the case before it was sent to state court.
Timing and brain injury called CTE
Adams’ family claims in the lawsuit he suffered from concussions and had chronic traumatic encephalopathy — a brain condition called CTE sometimes found in former football players that is caused by repeated head trauma.
The judge ruled in favor of the family about the timing of the lawsuit. Adams had not played in the NFL for years when he died.
Yet the Adams family did not know and could not know Adams had CTE until after his death, because the disease can only be found in the brain after death.
“The statute of limitations not only did not run out prior to Plaintiff bringing his claim for negligence, Plaintiff had no legal right to sue for the wrongful death of Decedent until after Decedent’s death, and the diagnosis of CTE was only able to be made posthumously,” McCutchen wrote.
What happens next?
The judge also declined to issue a “summary judgment” that S.C. State sought that would have taken the college out of the case.
The judge also compelled the NFL to send Adams’ lawyers several documents about the NFL’s business practices in South Carolina, including all contracts and agreements entered into by the NFL Properties regarding the failed Carolina Panthers headquarters and practice facility that was supposed to be built in Rock Hill but failed.
No trial date has been set.
This story was originally published January 8, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
