Per Law360, WWE and their CEO Vince McMahon is seeking $573,770.44 in legal fees from attorney Konstantine Kyros, who led the now-dismissed concussion/brain damage lawsuit against WWE. Kyros represented a number of former in-ring performers and he forwarded their claims about the sports-entertainment company hiding the risks of concussions from them.
Names listed on the suit against WWE were Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, Joseph “Road Warrior Animal” Laurinaitis, Paul “Mr. Wonderful” Orndorff, Chris “King Kong Bundy” Pallies, and Harry Masayoshi Fujiwara, known as Mr. Fuji.
WWE asked a federal court in Connecticut for over $500,000 this past Monday. The filing took place prior to a hearing regarding WWE’s two constituent applications for court-ordered fees. The applications are in relation to two consolidated cases that were dismissed. The first was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Vanessa Lynne Bryant in 2018 and the other was by a Second Circuit appeals panel in September of 2020.
Back in February, the concussion/brain damage case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by Konstantine Kyros. Kyros filed a request, asking the Supreme Court to hear the appeals. WWE denied the allegations and a spokesperson told the Associated Press that the lawsuits are without merit.
On top of WWE’s seeking of the six-figure number, they are also looking for an additional $39,844.00 in fees and costs in connection with their applications following the Second Circuit’s decision.
WWE attorney Jerry McDevitt further backed WWE’s innocence on the matter and discussed how there was misconduct from Kyros during the litigation.
He violated court orders, didn’t comply with court orders, ignored court orders that cautioned him to cease certain behavior or risk sanctions. He would continue the same kind of behavior. He plagiarized and made false allegations based on other lawsuits against the NFL, where he would just parrot allegations that had been made against the NFL or its personnel, and would just change [text], reading from ‘NFL’ to ‘WWE.’
The liability for sanctions has been established in three different court orders, that he’s supposed to pay all of our attorney’s fees in connection with various things he did wrong. The only thing left to be determined is how much that is.
As of this writing, Kyros is the only remaining attorney that is representing the plaintiffs in the case. The other attorneys he worked with from other firms filed motions to withdraw as counsel.
