Full Credit: Pwinsider.com & 411
WWE has filed a motion asking to have the few remaining counts in Vito LoGrasso and Evan Singleton’s lawsuit against them dismissed. Company lawyers asked on April 4th for the US District Court in Connecticut reconsider their decision to allow certain counts in the lawsuit to go ahead.
Singleton and LoGrasso are two of the few remaining concussion-related lawsuits standing against the company after the court dismissed cases by Haynes and the trio of Russ McCullough, Ryan Sakoda and Robert Wiese (Luther Reigns) last month. Portions of LoGrasso and Singleton’s claims were also thrown out, although the judge allowed several parts of their lawsuit to move ahead alleged that in 2005, WWE “became aware of and failed to disclose to its wrestlers information concerning a link between repeated head trauma and permanent degenerative neurological conditions.” LoGrasso was employed through 2007 and Singleton was employed with the company in 2012.
WWE has made its request with the argument that Singleton could not have been harmed by WWE’s failure to disclose, arguing that Singleton was injured while taking a chokeslam in 2012 in developmental. He was advised by the company to rest and take time off and was referred to a neurologist. While Singleton was cleared by an independent neurologist, WWE’s medical team refused to clear him and he didn’t train in a WWE ring again. WWE also says that Singleton’s claim in which he says he wasn’t advised of the dangers of head trauma is untrue as Dr. Joseph Maroon gave a presentation in August 2012 to developmental talents on “the importance of telling medical staff if talent suspected a concussion and about the risk of returning to the ring before fully healed.” As such, Singleton couldn’t have been hard by any alleged fraud by omission. The company says that they informed Singleton’s attorney of this but the claim has not been dropped from filings.
As for LoGrasso, WWE argues that he has acknowledged in filings that he “does not allege that he ever approached any WWE employee to report concussion-like symptoms or that any specific WWE employee had knowledge of his condition.” They say that if he didn’t report issues, WWE could not have plausibly ignored them or been fraudulent by omission. The motion says that Lo Grasso’s amended complaint against them does not “include factual allegations that plausibly invoke” continuing the course of the case or any concealment on the part of WWE. LoGrasso says he wasn’t aware of issues until the year he filed the lawsuit.
WWE’s motion also addresses claims that statements made by WWE management and Maroon proved the company was being fraudulent. In Maroon’s case a 2015 interview with the NFL Network has been brought up, which WWE argues can’t be used as fraud proof as the interview took place after the lawsuit was filed and “was an expression of opinion and not a misrepresentation of a past or present fact. WWE wishes to note that there is no allegation, nor could there be, that Dr. Maroon was acting as a representative or spokesman of WWE by appearing on the NFL Network, or that WWE is any way scripted, approved, or even knew of his appearance on the NFL Network. Dr. Maroon is a noted physician with his own opinions regarding that the current state of the science, and nobody expressing a genuinely held opinion is engaged in fraud.”
In WWE management’s case, the interview in question was a 2007 interview on CNN in which Vince McMahon “much to be learned on the subject.” WWE argues that comments like these are “precisely the sort of comments the Court correctly concluded “cannot usually support a fraud claim.”
