A federal judge has dismissed the claims of 60 former professional wrestlers, many of which were stars in the 1980s and 1990s, who alleged that through the WWE’s negligence they suffered traumatic brain injuries, leading to their premature deaths.
The court concluded that many of the claims were frivolous, or filed after the statute of limitations.
She also was highly critical of the wrestlers’ lawyer, Konstantine Kyros, finding that he repeatedly failed to comply with court rules. She also suggested that he was deceptive and that he refused to follow the court’s direction.
His “repeated failures to comply with the clear, and unambiguous provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure … has resulted in a considerable waste of the Court’s and the Defendants’ time and resources,” she wrote.
As such, she ordered him to pay the WWE’s legal fees.
“Attorney Kyros’ decision to assert frivolous claims has required the Court to waste considerable judicial resources sifting through three unreasonably long complaints filed in the Laurinaitis action, with the vague hope that some claim, buried within a mountain of extraneous information, might have merit,” the judge wrote.
Kyros strongly disagreed with the court’s ruling and vowed to appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In addition to arguing that his claims were not frivolous, he suggested that the statute of limitations had not expired because the diagnosis of dementia and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) occurred years after they left the ring.
Kyros told The Connecticut Post that he would appeal the “tragic ruling” on behalf of his clients to the 2nd U.S. Circuit.
“The decision is wrongly decided on a number of factual and legal grounds. The court simply ignored our (statute of limitations) arguments and paid no attention to the 60 detailed personal appeals in affidavits requested by the judge (that we delivered) almost a year ago,” Kyros wrote. He added that “the comments about me personally are inaccurate, and over the top.”
As for the actual argument that the WWE should have been more accountable, the judge wrote that she is “unwilling to find that the diagnosis of one wrestler with CTE is sufficient to imbue WWE with actual awareness of a probable link between wrestling and CTE.”
The decision can be read here: https://www.ctpost.com/default/item/Court-docs-Russ-McCullough-et-al-v-World-89808.php
