Lawyers are waiting on tenterhooks 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.
The ex-professional players signed up to a group claim led by London firm Rylands Garth but 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.
A spokesperson for Leigh Day told the Gazette the firm has 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 non-compliances with disclosure of medical evidence.
The defendants’ allegation include that recordings or transcripts or neurology interviews were not produced in some cases, while production of neuropsychological assessments was delayed in others.
In a progress report on behalf of the defendants, the court was told that the claimants had failed to provide any further and/or refined particulars of breach of duty. Neither had they provided any evidence in response to the application for claims to be struck out.
In their skeleton argument submitted to the court, lawyers for the claimants said the application for a wholesale strike-out was a ‘nuclear’ response to what were in reality logistical difficulties in a document-heavy group litigation. They said the theme of the application was a ‘wholesale attack’ on Boardman and Rylands.
The skeleton added: ‘The defendants repeatedly doubt and challenge what Mr Boardman has said and refuse to accept his word. This has led to a toxic situation in which the breadth of the claimants’ obligations has been inexorably widened by yet more and more allegations of default.’
The court reserved judgment following a hearing last week. The senior courts 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.
The Gazette has contacted Boardman for comment on this case and on further reports that he remains on the record for a group claim by former soccer players over head injuries they developed during their careers.
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