## Facts

- Derek Boogaard played professional hockey in the NHL and allegedly suffered repeated injuries during his career.
- The complaint alleged team medical staff repeatedly prescribed pain medications, leading to opioid and other drug addiction.
- The NHL placed Boogaard in its Substance Abuse and Behavioral Health Program, which included rehabilitation and an “Aftercare Program” with abstention requirements and random testing.
- After changing teams, Boogaard allegedly relapsed; the complaint alleged doctors prescribed medications prohibited by Aftercare and failed to enforce program sanctions.
- Boogaard died in 2011 from an overdose involving alcohol and oxycodone.
- His estate’s representatives sued the NHL asserting state-law negligence-based theories, including failures to prevent over-prescription, monitor addiction, monitor brain trauma, and regulate certain pain treatments.

## Issues

1. Whether plaintiffs forfeited any opposition to dismissal by failing in the district court to respond to the NHL’s Rule 12(b)(6) argument that the complaint failed to state a claim under any potentially applicable state law.
2. Whether the court needed to decide party-capacity, Erie, choice-of-law, and Rule 17 relation-back questions to affirm the dismissal.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal.
- The court held that plaintiffs forfeited any argument that the complaint stated a claim by not responding to the NHL’s district-court argument that the pleadings were insufficient under Illinois, Minnesota, or New York law.
- Because forfeiture independently defeated the suit, the court declined to decide the contested procedural and choice-of-law questions.
- The court affirmed on forfeiture grounds even though the district court had dismissed on a different rationale.

## Legal Principles

- In the Seventh Circuit, failure to respond to an argument raised in a dispositive motion can result in forfeiture of that issue.
- An appellate court may affirm a judgment on any ground supported by the record, including a ground different from the district court’s reasoning.
- Courts may avoid resolving complicated procedural questions when a narrower, case-dispositive basis (such as forfeiture) resolves the appeal.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit affirmed dismissal because the plaintiffs did not contest, in their district-court briefing, the NHL’s merits argument that the complaint failed to state a claim under any potentially applicable state law, forfeiting the only path to reversal regardless of other procedural disputes.


Boogaard v. Nat'l Hockey League, 891 F.3d 289 (7th Cir. 2018)