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In a major development in the ongoing lawsuits against World Wrestling Entertainment in regard to concussions and their alleged lack of education and protection for talents who performed for them in regard to head trauma, United States District Court of Connecticut Judge Vanessa L Bryant dismissed several lawsuits against the company and dismissed a number of claims brought against them in another lawsuit.
Most of Bryant's ruling noted that there are many, many contradictory statements made by the Plaintiffs in their filings against WWE. Referencing that the Plaintiffs claimdc they were never properly educated about the dangers of head trauma nor medical information about concussive blows, Bryant noted, "Beyond that sole allegation, the Complaints devote large portions of their overall length alleging various injuries and slights sustained by WWE wrestlers other than the named plaintiffs. In fact, despite the length of the Complaints, the Court’s prior admonishment of plaintiffs’ counsel and the Court’s provision of additional time to file a Second Amended Complaint in the Singleton action, there are precious few allegations which detail specific instances of conduct that have wronged any of the five plaintiffs. The Complaints are replete with theoretical allegations of conditions from which a hypothetical person could suffer without alleging that any particular Plaintiff actually suffers from such a condition which has been causally connected by an expert to such Plaintiff’s performance at WWE events."
Judge Bryant also wrote that the Plaintiffs, for example, made allegations about treatment allegedly suffered by wrestlers under former WWE Head Coach Bill DeMott, but that none of the allegations against him were actually claimed to have been suffered by the Plaintiffs themelves. Noting that the filings feature information about issues that were faced by wrestlers who were not Plaintiffs in the case, Bryant wrote the filings seemed to be aimed at "an audience other than this court."
Bryant also wrote in her ruling that some of the claims made by the Plaintiffs were "vague" and that the timelines did not support some of the other claims, noting a claim that the WWE Wellness Policy was created to "served to deceive Plaintiffs by providing a false sense of security and assurance that their health and safety were being adequately monitored, both in the ring and as former wrestlers."
Since the Policy was created in 2007, two years after Ryan Sakoda, Robert "Luther Reigns" Wiese and Russ McCullough had all retired and nowhere in their filings did any Plaintiffs claim that the Wellness Policy was created to monitor former talents' health. Therefore, their timeline didn't prove their statements.
Bryant also noted that the filings "parrot" each other and in some cases, were simply cut and pasted from one Plaintiff to the other. She pointed out that a claim filed by McCullough featured the excerpt, "LoGrasso, wrestling on average five times a week,
sustained repeated concussions day after day over many years,” never bothering to change the name to the actual Plaintiff in that filing.
Bryant wrote that Vito LoGrasso's complaint against WWE "speculatively alleges only that “upon information and belief” a WWE doctor would on numerous occasions” witness LoGrasso suffer head trauma extremely likely to cause concussions." Bryant then noted that while LoGrasso claims he was never given proper instruction or education about concussions, he still claimed to know that he suffered them "daily."
Bryant also noted, that while there could be a link between "possible and plausible" when it comes to the effect of head trauma leading to later health issues, "The Court is skeptical, however, of the inherent contradiction which underlies plaintiffs' fraud claims. Plaintiffs simultaneously argue on the one hand that studies and data linking MTBIs with permanent
degenerative neurological conditions were both widespread and widely-publicized, and on the other hand that Plaintiffs had no knowledge of any of this widely-publicized information and instead relied, to their detriment, on a television entertainment company to explain to them the dangers of volunteering, for compensation, to be hit in the head repeatedly with a metal folding chair."
In her 71 page ruling yesterday, which we will break down by Plaintiff, Bryant ruled the following:
BILLY JACK HAYNES
Haynes' lawsuit, the first of it's kind to be filed against the company in October 2014, has been completely dismissed.
Bryant ruled that the negligence claims against WWE were dismissed as Haynes had failed to state a claim under CT law, that the allegations of negligent misrepresentation and fradulent deceit claims were dismissed as Haynes failed to specify any actual false representation from WWE, and that his claims of fraudulent concealment and medical monitoring claims in that the company was hiding the dangers of head trauma and should have been medically overseeing talents were also dismissed as Haynes did not state how, under CT law, those claims were actionable.
In layman's terms, Haynes was unable to substantiate his claims and prove that under CT law, WWE was responsible for any of the allegations he made against them and that under CT law. He was also unable to prove that WWE purposely made fraudulent claims.
RUSS MCCULLOUGH & RYAN SAKODA & ROBERT WIESE (PKA LUTHER REIGNS)
Their lawsuit, originally filed in California before being moved to CT was also completely dismissed for the same legal grounds as the Haynes lawsuit.
VITO LOGRASSO & EVAN SINGLETON
Much of the claims brought against WWE by LoGrasso and Singleton were dismissed for the same reasons as the other lawsuits but several of the claims against WWE in this lawsuit were allowed to move forward.
Specificially allowed was their claim alleging that in 2005, WWE "became aware of and failed to disclose to its wrestlers information concerning a link between repeated head trauma and permanent degenerative neurological conditions."
Since WWE had created the Wellness Policy and LoGrasso and Singleton had wrestled during that period, the court ruled it was within reason that there was a possibility that WWE had a "greater knowledge" of the dangers via information cultivated via Wellness Policy data. So the court is allowing that aspect of the case to move forward so the matter can be determined.
OTHER LAWSUITS.
The lawsuits WWE brought against Koko B. Ware, Blackjack Mulligan, Ivan Koloff and The Dynamite Kid, filed preemptively when the company was contacted via letters to set the stage for potential lawsuits against WWE, were also dismissed yesterday.
Motions by WWE to dismiss lawsuits brought against the company by the estates of Nelson Frazier Jr. (Viscera) and Matt Osbourne (Matt "Doink the Clown" Borne) are still pending.
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