The brain damage lawsuit against WWE was dismissed in September of 2020. Several former talents that worked for the company claimed in the suit that WWE did not protect them from repeated head injuries. The case was originally brought by Billy Jack Haynes, Russ McCullough, Matt Wiese and Ryan Sakoda in 2016.
Other names listed on the suit 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. All of the plaintiffs except Orndorff have passed away.
Their case is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by lawyer Konstantine Kyros. Kyros filed a request on Wednesday, 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.
PWInsider reached out to WWE attorney Jerry McDevitt and he responded to the news of the appeal:
[Konstantine Kyros] has no automatic right to appeal to the Supreme Court. He has to ask them to accept an appeal, and that is what he filed. The large majority of requests are denied, and the Supreme Court typically takes cases presenting some issue of national import where the courts in the various federal circuits differ on some specific issue of federal law.
Here, Kyros is asking the Supreme Court to reverse the Second Circuit decision that he filed an appeal too late in the cases of Billy Jack Haynes, Russ McCullough, Matthew Wiese, Ryan Sakoda and Nelson Frazier.
He is not attempting to have them hear the dismissals of all the other cases, which are now over for good. The lower courts threw those cases out on the basis of state law, which the Supreme Court would not touch.
It is an exercise in futility, because even the Supreme Court were to hear his request and find that his appeal on behalf of those five was timely, he would still lose on the merits because their claims are all barred by statute of limitations. In short, a waste of time and money which we don’t think will go anywhere.
He will, however, have to face a sanctions hearing next month on how much he has to pay WWE.
The court backed 2018 rulings by Vanessa Bryant, federal judge in Connecticut. She said there was no evidence that WWE knew concussions or head blows during matches caused CTE.
