Several former professional wrestlers who claimed in lawsuits that World Wrestling Entertainment failed to protect them from repeated head injuries are taking their case to the US Supreme Court.
A lawyer for the former fighters filed a request late Wednesday asking the Supreme Court to hear appeals from lower court rulings dismissing the trials, saying they were filed after the statute of limitations expired. WWE says the lawsuits are baseless and believes the calls will not be successful.
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 were among more than 50 former wrestlers, most of them stars in the 1980s and 1990s, who sued WWE, saying they suffered repeated head injuries, including contusions that led to long-term brain injuries. They accused WWE, based in Stamford, Connecticut, of knowing about the risks of head injuries, but did not warn the fighters. Several lawsuits were dismissed by a lower federal court in 2018.
Other fighters who filed a complaint included 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 were diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, after their deaths, according to their lawyer. Pallies and Laurinaitis died in 2019 and 2020, respectively, from undisclosed causes. Other applicants have dementia and other illnesses, it is said in the trial.
In September, the second U.S. Court of Appeal in New York rejected several lawsuits, including some it said were filed too late. The court upheld the 2018 rulings of federal Judge Vanessa Bryant of Connecticut, who said there was no evidence that WWE knew the shaking or banging during CTE’s wrestling matches.
Former fighters’ lawyer, Konstantine Kyros, based in Hingham, Massachusetts, criticized the rulings and said the former fighters were “deprived of their fundamental rights as American citizens, including their right to appeal.”
Kyros said the court on circuit 2 dismissed the previous appeals because no final judgments had been handed down in all the proceedings. After Bryant handed down those final judgments in 2018, Kyros appealed in several of the lawsuits now before the Supreme Court. However, he said the second circuit rejected those appeals, saying they were filed too late, according to a new precedent set by the Supreme Court.
Jerry WDevitt, a lawyer for WWE, said he did not think he would succeed in reviving the trials of the five fighters.
In the 2018 ruling, Bryant also criticized Kyros for repeatedly disobeying court rules and orders and ordering him to pay WWE legal fees – over $ 500,000.
Unlike football and hockey, in which players suffered similar injuries, WWE matches involve written and choreographed moves by WWE, making the company directly responsible for the fighters’ injuries, the lawsuits said.
The National Football League and the National Hockey League were also sued by former players who suffered contusions and other head injuries. The NFL was set at $ 1 billion, while the NHL was set at $ 18.9 million.