WWE got a major win in court late on Thursday, as as Judge Vanessa L. Bryant in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut dismissed both wrongful death lawsuits outstanding against the company. The lawsuits had been filed by Konstantine Kyros, the same attorney behind the other concussion-themed cases against WWE, on behalf of Cassandra Frazier, the widow of Nelson “Mabel/Viscera/Big Daddy V” Frazier Jr. and Michelle James, who Matt “Matt Borne/original Doink” Osborne had a child with.
Neither wrestler’s brain had been preserved for an examination to determine if they had Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), and neither death had any kind of head or brain trauma listed as a contributing cause on their death certificates. Frazier died of a heart attack (although no autopsy was performed) and Osborne succumbed to a drug overdose. Frazier was very overweight, as he had been for his whole career, while Borne had well-known issues with drug addiction going back to early in his career.
Curiously, the Frazier complaint was the only one of Kyros’ numerous brain injury lawsuits against WWE not to mention that CTE can only be diagnosed postmortem. Since Frazier was cremated with no autopsy conducted, it literally can’t ever be proven one way or another if he had CTE. This was one of a few things where Bryant appeared to take issue with the plaintiffs’ tactics. Other such notes include:
- “The Court notes, in particular, the facially specious assertions by Plaintiffs’ counsel that, ‘upon information and belief,’ both Frazier and Osborne ‘had CTE.’ The complaints contain no information from which such a belief could be derived.”
- “It is impossible to plausibly allege, much less prove that either wrestler had CTE. Kyros and his co-counsels’ assertion that either wrestler had the condition ‘upon information and belief’ must therefore be knowingly false.”
- “[C]ounsel’s allegation that Frazier’s ‘inability to survive the heart attack’ can be ‘more likely than not attributed’ to his CTE is yet another bald and baseless allegation, unprovable and unsupportable, which the Court deems unworthy of the barest measure of credibility.”
In the end, the James/Osborne case was officially dismissed because James lacked standing as not being the executor of Osborne’s estate. As for Frazier, that case was dismissed because the plaintiffs did not argue “specific facts” supporting the allegations that his death stemmed from in-ring injuries or any kind of potential fraudulent conduct on WWE’s part.
WWE had also moved to have Kyros sanctioned for violating Rule 11, which requires that attorneys have some kind of evidence supporting their allegations before filing suit.While the court denied the motion, Bryant did acknowledge “Kyros’ habit of deceptive and inflammatory rhetoric,” use of “deliberately misleading language,” “vexatious and transparent attempt to circumvent two prior decisions by district courts”
