World Rugby this week filed its defence to lawsuits brought by hundreds \u2060of former rugby union players over neurological injuries, denying any liability and arguing injuries are a “foreseeable and inherent \u200crisk” in playing the sport.<\/p>\n
Nearly 800 ex-amateur and professional players are suing \u200cWorld Rugby, the Rugby Football Union and the \u200cWelsh Rugby Union, in a case which began in 2022 and \u200chas been beset by delays, including over disclosure of \u200cthe claimants’ medical records.<\/p>\n
The claimants’ lawyers say repeated concussive and sub-concussive blows left them with serious neurological conditions and allege the governing \u200cbodies breached their duty of care by \u2060failing to protect them \u200cfrom those risks.<\/p>\n
The governing bodies have always denied liability, and World \u200bRugby filed its written defence to the lawsuits at London’s High Court on Thursday, which was made \u200bpublic on Friday.<\/p>\n
“World Rugby denies that the claimants – or any of them – suffered any injury as a result of any \u2060breach of duty by \u200bWorld Rugby, as alleged or at all,” their lawyers said.<\/p>\n
The defence states: “It is denied that rugby union carries with it a ‘likelihood’ of head and brain injury.<\/p>\n
“It is admitted that physical \u200cinjury, including head and brain injury, is a foreseeable and inherent risk in the sport of rugby union, and that all those who participate in the game voluntarily accept this risk.”<\/p>\n
World Rugby also denies that it “knew at any material time of any established science supporting an association between non-concussive head acceleration events … and neurological injury”.<\/p>\n
Lawyers representing the claimants have previously argued that rugby union’s governing bodies owed \u200cduties of care to players of the game.<\/p>\n
The latest preliminary \u200bhearing in the case is due to take place \u200cnext month. The Rugby Football Union, the Welsh Rugby Union and a lawyer representing the claimants did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The case is one of three similar actions working its way through \u2060the courts, with governing \u2060bodies for rugby league \u200cand soccer also facing litigation from ex-players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World Rugby this week filed its defence to lawsuits brought by hundreds \u2060of former rugby union players over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-507782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}