LONDON, Aug 21 (Reuters) – More than 500 ex-rugby union and league players’ lawsuits over neurological injuries can continue, London’s High Court ruled on Friday, despite their former lawyers’ failure to disclose key medical evidence to governing bodies.
World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union, plus the Rugby Football League and the British Amateur Rugby League Association, argued the claimants’ lawyers had repeatedly failed to provide records.
They asked for a ruling which would end the cases of more than 500 former professional and amateur players over both codes.
But lawyers representing the claimants argued they had provided the vast majority of the documents required and stressed the litigation’s wider importance for contact sports in the UK.
Judge Jeremy Cook said in a written ruling that the cases could continue subject to the production of the missing documents, adding that the “individual claimants are blameless”.
The case began in 2022 but has been dogged by delays over disclosure, as has a parallel action by ex-rugby league players.
Almost 800 former rugby union players – including Steve Thompson and Phil Vickery, members of England’s 2003 World Cup-winning team – are suing World Rugby, the RFU and the WRU. More than 300 former rugby league players are also taking legal action.
The ex-players say repeated concussive and sub-concussive blows left them with serious neurological conditions and allege the governing bodies breached their duty of care by failing to protect them from those risks.
The governing bodies, however, dispute that there is, or was, any such duty of care that extended to include the long-term risk of serious neurological conditions and World Rugby argued in its written defence that injuries are an “inherent risk” in rugby.
(Reporting by Sam Tobin and William James; editing by Sam Tabahriti and Toby Davis)
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