A federal judge has sided with class counsel in the NFL concussion litigation on several disputes, including how the former players' claims should be processed and whether attorney fee awards should be delayed until more payments are made to the claimants.

U.S. District Judge Anita Brody of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania issued rulings Tuesday, settling several disputes that have arisen since the claims registration period ended over the summer. Along with denying requests for additional briefing on the lingering issue of how attorney fees should be divided up, Brody also rejected attempts by attorneys representing individual claimants to re-examine the claims administration process and to prioritize the compensation of former players before the fees are awarded.

In a separate ruling, the special masters involved in implementing the $1 billion settlement agreement, which is expected to compensate 20,000 former National Football League players suffering concussion-related injuries, disqualified a doctor who allegedly misrepresented information involving 153 claims from assessing any more. The ruling indicated the masters would continue to look into the matter, and could disqualify any firm found to have made more than one fraudulent submission.

Another ruling from special master and Penn Law provost Wendell Pritchett addressed how claims should be assessed involving former players removed from the active list during a game, finding that those games would accrue toward that claimant's eligible season.

In an emailed statement, co-lead class counsel Chris Seeger of Seeger Weiss said he was pleased with that ruling.

“We are pleased for the retired NFL players who will be positively affected by this ruling, as it will ensure they receive proper credit for their time in the NFL,” he said. “We will continue fighting on their behalf so they receive these important and hard-earned benefits.”

Regarding awarding the attorney fees, Brody's order denied a motion filed by several attorneys that asked the court to “prioritize and separate vitally needed player compensation payments from any and all attorneys' fees awards” and to have a special master appointed to address the attorney fee requests.

The motion, filed in October by Steven Yerrid of The Yerrid Law Firm, along with Gibbs & Parnell, Jeff Murphy Law, and Holliday Karatinos Law Firm, said deferring attorney fee awards would encourage class counsel to facilitate timely awards to claimants. Some attorneys involved in the litigation have criticized the claims process for being too slow.

“The public perception is that class counsel are now asking for millions of dollars in compensation while brain-damaged players continue to deteriorate and even die while awaiting payment of their claims as the process is being 'slow played' and unnecessarily delayed,” Yerrid said in the filing on behalf of the firms, which make up a group called the Neurocognitive Football Lawyers.

More than $112 million is expected to be disbursed to attorneys representing the injured players, but lawyers have disputed how that money should be divided up, with Seeger asking for more than $70 million for the work his firm put into the litigation.

The dispute over the claims administration process that Brody also denied Tuesday stemmed from a motion filed by North Palm Beach, Florida, attorney Patrick Tighe, who is representing 85 former players.

According to Tighe, the claims administrators were not following the language of the settlement agreement by, among other things, mandating that players provide the raw data, rather than the medical findings, from previous neuropsychological tests, which, he said, can be very difficult to obtain.

“All we are asking them to do is abide by the settlement agreement, and to not add substantive language to it,” he said, adding that he is evaluating whether to appeal Brody's ruling. “They've turned this on its head. It's become, let's assume everybody's committing fraud, and then examine it as if there's fraud involved.”

Yerrid did not return a call seeking comment.