Hundreds of rugby players have been left in limbo after the lawyer at the heart of the sport’s big concussion lawsuit quit the case.
More than 1,100 players have been involved in the lawsuit after legal action was launched in 2020. Those involved claim that the governing bodies of both rugby union and league – namely World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union, the Welsh Rugby Union, the Rugby Football League (RFL) and the British Amateur Rugby League Association (BARLA) – failed to put in place reasonable measures to protect them from suffering serious brain injuries during their playing careers.
Around 50 former Wales internationals have been revealed to be part of the lawsuit, including Gavin Henson, Lee Byrne, Jonathan Thomas, Ian Gough and Colin Charvis. Meanwhile, Alix Popham, Ryan Jones and Dafydd James are among those to have gone public with their claims having all been diagnosed with early onset dementia.
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Lou Reed, Morgan Stoddart, Hal Luscombe and Rhys Gill are also among the ex-Wales internationals involved, while others previously confirmed to be part of the lawsuit include England World Cup winners Steve Thompson, Mark Regan and Phil Vickery, as well as former Lions Phil Greening and Harry Ellis.
Now, those players have been plunged into uncertainty after Richard Boardman, whose firm Rylands Garth has represented the hundreds of claimants since legal action was launched, notified the court that he is stepping away from the case.
“I am writing to inform you and the defendants that my intention is to come off the record in this litigation and I have started taking steps to do so,” he told the court.
With new representation now needing to be found, Telegraph Sport reports that many players involved in the case were unaware of the potential change in representation before it was announced in court.
It comes after Boardman was repeatedly criticised by the court, with the governing bodies applying to have dozens of players’ claims struck out over Rylands’ failure to disclose medical records.
The judge presiding over the case management hearings, Senior Master Cook, last year told Boardman that he had a “complete misunderstanding of his responsibilities” following repeated failures to disclose all necessary medical records to the defendants.
Rylands appealed against the judgement that they needed to disclose the material, but lost the appeal, leading to further criticism from the appeal judge Lord Justice Dias
The judge criticised Boardman for “the repeated extensions, the strong indications by the judge from early in proceedings of the need for active progression of the litigation, the gross misunderstandings about his disclosure duties and the associated puzzling nature of these fundamental misconceptions with his unconvincing explanations.”
He concluded: “It was entirely reasonable in my judgment for the judge to lack confidence in the adequacy or legal accuracy of the approach to disclosure.”
According to Telegraph Sport, legal firm Leigh Day has been consulting on the case and is “currently engaging in a period of due diligence in order to decide whether they would be in a position to take over subject to clients’ agreement”.
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