Rugby players’ head-injury claim ‘in limbo’
Lawyers are waiting this week to discover whether a high-profile group head-injury claim involving more than 1,000 former rugby players will survive in its current form and scope, according to the England-and-Wales Gazette.
The ex-professional players signed up to a group claim led by London firm Rylands Garth, but the Gazette says that they are now in limbo while the court decides on a strike-out application and they look for new representatives.
Solicitor Richard Boardman, owner of Rylands Garth, wrote to the High Court outlining his intention to come off the record in the litigation.
He said that national firm Leigh Day had been appointed as a consultant and was engaging in a period of due diligence to decide whether it could take over the claim, subject to the players’ agreement.
Medical evidence
A spokesperson for Leigh Day told the Gazette that the firm had not yet had an opportunity to properly consider whether to come on the record.
In the meantime, rugby’s governing bodies, in both the union and league codes, applied last week to the court to have the majority of claims struck out for various alleged instances of non-compliance with disclosure of medical evidence.
The defendants’ allegations include that recordings or transcripts or neurology interviews were not produced in some cases, while production of neuropsychological assessments was delayed in others.
‘Nuclear’ response
In their skeleton argument submitted to the court, lawyers for the claimants said that the application for a wholesale strike-out was a “nuclear” response to what were, in reality, logistical difficulties in a document-heavy group litigation.
The court reserved judgment after a hearing last week.
The Gazette says that senior courts in England will be on summer break from the end of this week until October, raising the prospect that, without a judgment being handed down this week, the case could be delayed further by several months if it is to be preserved at all.