London High Court allows more than 500 rugby brain‑injury claims to proceed

More than 500 former rugby union and league players’ lawsuits were allowed to continue by London’s High Court on Friday despite their former lawyers’ failure to disclose key medical evidence, the court ruled.

World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union, together with the Rugby Football League and the British Amateur Rugby League Association, had applied for a ruling to end the cases, arguing the claimants’ lawyers had repeatedly failed to provide records; claimants’ lawyers countered they had produced the vast majority of required documents and emphasised the litigation’s wider importance for contact sports in the UK.

Judge Jeremy Cook said in a written ruling that the cases should proceed to trial “with some hesitation” and subject to “conditions” to be decided at a further hearing, and he added that “the individual claimants are blameless.”

Cook said the litigation involved “exceptional circumstances” and had a “particular element of public importance going beyond the individual claims.” He wrote: “This litigation has the potential to greatly impact the way in which one of our national sports is conducted at amateur and professional levels. I of course recognise the countervailing public interest that litigation should be conducted efficiently.”

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, and more than 300 former rugby league players are also taking legal action.

The claimants 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 dispute there was any duty of care extending to the long-term risk of serious neurological conditions and World Rugby argued in its written defence that injuries are an “inherent risk” in rugby.

The High Court permitted the claims to continue on the condition that the missing medical documents are produced, and a further hearing will determine the precise conditions for the trials to proceed.