A solicitor representing hundreds of former rugby players in a group personal injury claim has been accused of misleading the court about disclosure.
Richard Boardman, owner of claimant firm Rylands Garth, is leading some 358 current and retired rugby union and rugby league players who say they have suffered lasting brain damage from collisions.
But lawyers for the Rugby Football League Limited, one of the defendants to the group claim, have now applied for the case to be struck out based on the handling of disclosure issues. They told the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday that Rylands Garth had disclosed medical records in a ‘disorganised and chaotic form’, with each individual claimant’s documents ‘scattered’ across multiple sub-folders.
The court had previously ordered that full medical records of claimant players be handed over to enable for a group of test cases to be identified.
At a previous case management hearing, the claimants’ representatives had assured the court that disclosure was ‘complete’ and that documents were available to be shared. In particular, Boardman had stated that neurological assessments and brain scans were complete, as the court had previously required.
For the RFL, William Audland KC said: ‘The position presented by [the claimant] to the court and to [the defendant] in relation to disclosure before, during and after the last CMC has been misleading. There have in fact been widespread failures to comply with the court’s orders.’
Audland said Boardman should have told the court previously that, given the scale of the disclosure task, he had not been able to check whether the testing processes were complete. He added that full medical records were missing in around 90% of claims. In some cases, documents had been disclosed but could not be opened in the format they were sent.
Boardman produced a witness statement earlier this month which Audland described as ‘an extraordinary document, the purpose of which appears to be to deflect and obfuscate’. The solicitor had said that he was confident that he had available ‘everything of any real relevance’ but admitted the firm had not had the resources to analyse medical records forensically.
Audland added: ‘Mr Boardman’s statement that there has been “substantial compliance” is a clear recognition that there has not been full compliance. Again, this is contrary to the assurances given to the court and to [the defendant].’
Susan Rodway KC, representing the claimants, said they had worked extensively to comply with all court orders and accused the defendants of failing to collaborate to make the disclosure process easier. She suggested full medical history was too broad a term and made unrealistic requirement to supply historic and irrelevant information.
‘The only remedy is to sit round a table and first and foremost to identify which documents are missing,’ she said. ‘Secondly to identify which documents they seriously want to be chased… we are doing our utmost and you can see the vast amounts of work that has been carried out, but in many instances we do come up a blind alley. There are no documents out there with some smoking gun that is going to be some eureka moment for the defence.’
Audland rejected the idea that the claimants were not capable of a deep disclosure exercise, pointing out they were being bankrolled by a wealthy litigation funder with ‘very deep pockets’.
The hearing continues.
