Appeals Court Dismisses CTE Class Action Lawsuit Against WWE

A longtime class action lawsuit filed by several former WWE wrestlers against the company was recently dismissed.

PWInsider reported that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently dismissed an appeal by lawyer Konstantine Kyros, who is representing several former WWE wrestlers, to overturn the decision made in 2018 by the United States District Court of Connecticut. This 2018 ruling by Judge Vanessa L. Bryant rejected all CTE-related allegations that were made in the lawsuit.

Kyros and several former wrestlers claimed that WWE officials were aware of the dangers of CTE going as far back as the 1980s but purposely did not inform their talent nor protect them from the dangers associated with repeated blows to the head and concussions.

The U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the previous court’s decision that these lawsuits were either frivolous or filed after the statute of limitations had expired. The court also agreed that identifying when CTE-related injuries might have been suffered was difficult due to those wrestlers having also worked for different promotions and not just WWE.

Following the court’s decision, WWE released this statement to media:

“For nearly six years, WWE was subjected to stale and frivolous claims brought by Konstantine Kyros, whose misconduct triggered countless judicial opinions along the way. Today, the Second Circuit put an end to his pattern of baseless litigation, leaving open only the question of how much he must now pay to WWE as a sanction for his misconduct. We are grateful for the attention paid to these cases by the numerous federal judges who oversaw the litigation, and to the Second Circuit for its decision.”