All parties in a lawsuit filed in Allegheny County agreed that Shane Skillpa sustained a concussion at a West Mifflin Area School District football practice as a sophomore in 2009.

They also agreed that in recent years he has shown symptoms of anxiety, forgetfulness, depression and headaches.

The split among them, though, was whether Skillpa’s health problems now stemmed from that initial concussion and subsequent hits he took in the days after — or from something else entirely.

Late Friday afternoon, a jury ruled against Skillpa on all claims. The panel, which heard 10 days of testimony in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, deliberated for about four hours.

Skillpa had been seeking $5 million in damages — both in pain and suffering and in future lost wages.

He was not in the courtroom for the verdict, and his attorneys declined to comment.

Skillpa, 29, filed a lawsuit against the school district, the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association and the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League in 2017 alleging negligence and breach of contract.

He claimed that it was evident at the time he sustained a helmet-to-helmet blow on Aug. 24, 2009, that it was likely he had a concussion. However, the coaches never removed him from play. Instead, he said they told him he had “his bell rung,” had him get a new helmet — because his was broken — and let him continue practicing.

Only after a few days, when Skillpa’s mother noticed he didn’t seem well, did he seek medical attention. He said he was in concussion treatment for several months over the next two years before he was cleared.

However, in late 2016, Skillpa said he started seeing a doctor for the symptoms he was experiencing, and that doctor, Thomas Franz, linked them back to the original concussion. Franz has given him a poor prognosis, testifying that Skillpa, who works as a nurse, will likely be unable to work in that capacity in five to 10 years because of the progression of his symptoms.

He also suggested a potentially shortened life span.

Dr. Bennet Omalu, widely recognized as being the first to link blows to the head in football with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, also testified in Skillpa’s case. He told the jury he agreed with Franz’s diagnoses, and suggested that Skillpa has traumatic encephalopathy — permanent brain damage — caused by the concussion and hits afterward.

“This is something Shane is going to face every single day for the rest of his life,” Skillpa’s attorney, Richard Sandow, said in his closing argument. “The people who caused it should have to compensate him for it.”

Sandow said the PIAA constitution says that the organization “will promote, protect and conserve the health and physical welfare of all participants.”

That, Sandow told the jury, served as a contract with the students it serves.

Under that constitution, Sandow continued, the PIAA could have enforced rules, including that if a student sustains a hit to the head, they are immediately removed from play. It should have ensured coaches were properly trained in concussion protocol, and it could have outlawed drills like the Oklahoma-style one in which Skillpa was injured, he said.

“There’s overwhelming evidence they did not provide for Shane’s safety,” he said. “It was a drill that was unsafe and had a much higher risk for injury.”

As for the school district, the lawsuit accused it of failing to provide a safe playing surface for the football team, noting that when it had its football field replaced in 2008 with FieldTurf, it had the cushioned, rubber underlayment that had previously been under the field removed.

Skillpa also alleged the school district failed to follow concussion protocol when Skillpa was hurt.

“The coaches were supposed to remove him from play and get medical clearance,” he said. “That didn’t happen.”

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Attorney Joseph Luvara, who represented the school district at trial, said the coaches didn’t remove Skillpa from play because they didn’t know he was injured.

“Mr. Skillpa never reported this to anyone,” Luvara said. “There’s been no testimony the coaches knew he was injured to remove him from play.”

As for the claim about the field where Skillpa was injured, Luvara said the district went with the best, state-of-the-art field surface available.

“There has been no proof whatsoever that there was a defect … in the field,” Luvara told the jury. “If there’s no defect in the field, there’s no claim.”

Defense attorneys for West Mifflin, the PIAA and the WPIAL also argued that there was no objective medical evidence presented at trial to link Skillpa’s symptoms to the 2009 concussion.

Instead, Luvara told the jurors Skillpa’s doctor is arguing “because the symptoms occurred after the concussion, they occurred because of the concussion.”

“Only he, and no one else, connected the dots,” Luvara said. “I suggest to you there were no dots to connect.”

He cited their own experts who both testified that a concussion did not cause Skillpa’s symptoms, and that he exhibited some of the same symptoms prior to the concussion.

In the claims against the PIAA and WPIAL, defense attorney Andrew Kimball said his clients are nonprofit organizations that provide guidance to high school athletes across the state.

Their members include 1,500 schools and represent 350,000 students in 16 different sports. Because of the vast size of PIAA, they must rely on high school principals to ensure student athletes are being treated appropriately.

Kimball said in his closing that there is no contract between the PIAA and students. The organization offers sports medicine guidelines that list concussion protocols — including removal from play — but they are not rules.

The two associations, Kimball told the jury, cannot be liable for negligence.

“We didn’t fall below any standard of care,” he said.

After the verdict was read, Jessica Fletcher, an alternate juror who did not participate in deliberations, said she was surprised.

“I am just stunned,” she said. “Everything that was presented, you could clearly see he’s in bad shape. I just don’t understand how they were swayed that way.”

But Kimball and Luvara praised the jury’s verdict.

“I think it was the right decision,” Kimball said. “We’ve done a lot of things over the years to keep kids safe, and that certainly has to do with concussion.”

Since Skillpa was injured 13 years ago, Kimball said, there has been significant progress in how high schools deal with concussions.

“There have been a lot of changes since that time,” he said, noting that every coach has to be certified now. “We’ve come a long way in 13 years.”

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