High Court Allows Rugby Brain Injury Lawsuits to Continue

More than 500 former rugby union and rugby league players can continue their neurological injury lawsuits after a ruling by London's High Court on Friday. Reuters, reporting on the decision, said Judge Jeremy Cook declined requests from five governing bodies to end the cases over failures by the claimants' former lawyers to disclose medical material.

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The applications came from World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union, the Welsh Rugby Union, the Rugby Football League and the British Amateur Rugby League Association. The organizations argued that lawyers for the former players had repeatedly failed to supply required records and sought a decision that would bring the affected cases to an end.

Lawyers representing the claimants opposed that outcome. They said they had already provided the great majority of the requested documents and pointed to the wider importance of the litigation for contact sports in Britain. Cook ruled that the cases could continue, provided the outstanding documents are produced, and found that the individual claimants were not responsible for the disclosure failures.

The litigation extends beyond the cases covered by Friday's application. Reuters reported that almost 800 former rugby union players are suing World Rugby, the RFU and the WRU. That group includes Steve Thompson and Phil Vickery, both members of England's 2003 Rugby World Cup-winning team. More than 300 former rugby league players are also pursuing legal action.

The former players say repeated concussive and sub-concussive impacts caused serious neurological conditions. Their claims allege that the governing bodies breached a duty of care by failing to protect players from those risks. The governing bodies dispute that they had a duty extending to the long-term risk of serious neurological illness, and World Rugby has argued in its written defence that injury is an inherent risk of the sport.

Friday's decision concerns whether the affected cases can move forward despite the document dispute; it does not decide the underlying allegations. The next procedural requirement identified in the ruling is the production of the missing records. The players' claims and the governing bodies' defences therefore remain to be tested as the litigation continues.