Several former pro wrestlers who have claimed in lawsuits that World Wrestling Entertainment does not protect them from repeated head injuries are taking their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A lawyer for the former wrestlers filed a request late Wednesday in which he asked the Supreme Court to appeal against rulings in the lower court that dismissed the lawsuits and said they were filed after the statute of limitations expired . The WWE says the lawsuits are without merit and believes the appeals will not succeed.
The plaintiffs include William “Billy Jack” Haynes, Russ “Big Russ” McCullough, Ryan Sakoda, Matthew “Luther Reigns” Wiese and the wife of the late Nelson “Viscera” Frazier, also known as Big Daddy V, who died in 2014 .
They included more than 50 former wrestlers, most of them stars in the 1980s and 1990s, who sued WWE, saying they sustained repeated head injuries, including concussions that led to long-term brain damage. They accused the WWE in Stamford, Connecticut, of knowing the risks of head injuries, but did not warn the wrestlers. Several lawsuits were dismissed in 2018 by a lower federal court.
The other wrestlers who have filed include Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, Joseph “Road Warrior Animal” Laurinaitis, Paul “Mr. Wonderful ”Orndorff, Chris“ King Kong Bundy ”Pallies and Harry Masayoshi Fujiwara, known as mr. Fuji.
Snuka and Fujiwara died in 2017 and 2016, respectively, and according to their lawyer, they were diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Pallies and Laurinaitis died in 2019 and 2020 respectively due to unknown causes. Other plaintiffs have dementia and other illnesses, according to the lawsuit.
In September, the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in New York dismissed several of the lawsuits, including some that it said were filed too late. The court upheld Federal Judge Vanessa Bryant’s ruling in Connecticut in 2018, which said there was no evidence that the WWE caused concussions or head blows during wrestling matches.
Former wrestling lawyer Constantine Kyros, who is based in Hingham, Massachusetts, criticized the verdict, saying the former wrestlers were “deprived of their fundamental rights as citizens of the United States, including their right to appeal.”
Kyros said the 2nd Circuit Court had earlier rejected appeals because final rulings had not been made in all the lawsuits. After Bryant made the final rulings in 2018, Kyros withdrew appeals in several of the lawsuits now pending before the Supreme Court. But he said the 2nd Circuit rejected the appeals, saying it was submitted too late according to a new precedent set by the Supreme Court.
Jerry McDevitt, a lawyer for the WWE, said he did not think the attempt to revive the five wrestlers’ lawsuits would succeed.
In her 2018 ruling, Bryant also criticized Kyros for repeatedly failing to comply with court rules and orders and ordering WWE to pay legal costs – more than $ 500,000.
Unlike football and hockey, in which players sustained similar injuries, WWE matches involve movements signed and choreographed by the WWE, making the company directly responsible for wrestlers’ injuries.
The National Football League and the National Hockey League have also been sued by former players who suffered concussions and other head injuries. The NFL settled for $ 1 billion, while the NHL settled for $ 18.9 million.