Lawsuits From Families Of Matt Osbourne and Nelson Frazier Against WWE Dismissed

PWInsider reports that lawsuits against WWE by the families of Matt “Doink the Clown” Osbourne and Nelson “Big Daddy V” Frazier Jr. were dismissed by Judge Vanessa L. Bryant in the United States District Court of Connecticut on November 10.

Cassandra Frazier, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Nelson on February 18, 2015 in the Shelby County Circuit Court in Memphis, Tennessee. It listed both Nelson and Cassandra as the plaintiffs. The lawsuit claimed his death was due to the punishment he received in the ring, including concussions and brain trauma from over 400 matches between 1994 and 2008. He died in 2014, with his official cause of death listed as “Hypertensive cardiovascular disease” and “[m]orbid obesity, diabetes mellitus.” It was moved to Connecticut after WWE contracts stated any legal issues had to be heard there since WWE was stationed there.

Meanwhile, the family of Matt Osbourne, filed a lawsuit in Dallas, Texas on June 26, 2015. They claimed that brain injuries and other problems during his time in WWE led to his death in June 2013. The suit was filed on behalf of his children, stating that “traumatic brain injuries” resulted in “depression and drug abuse, which ultimately resulted in [Osbourne’s] untimely death.” He died due to an accidental painkiller overdose. The lawsuit was also moved to the State of Connecticut.

Judge Bryant filed a ruling on November 10, stating that since an autopsy wasn’t performed on Frazier, it’s “factually impossible” to connect his heart attack to any issues caused by his time in WWE. The lawsuit also claimed that Frazier had CTE, but Bryant said there was no official medical diagnosis post-mortem that proved that, which the filing didn’t mention. That means it’s impossible to state that on the record. The ruling also said that there was nothing in the lawsuit that proves his injuries are from his time in WWE. The lawsuit allegedly gave “broad descriptions” and claims that in every performance (including squash matches), Frazier was injured. The court ruled against the idea that if Frazier didn’t have CTE, he would have survived his heart attack.

Meanwhile, Judge Bryant said the lawsuit from Michelle James (the mother of Osbourne’s children, who wasn’t married to him) didn’t have the right to do that as she wasn’t the executor or the administrator of Osbourne’s estate. Her attorneys didn’t try to argue this as they had six months to have an estate established after the issue was brought up.

Bryant wrote: At no time did counsel for Plaintiffs invest the minimal effort and expense necessary to establish an estate and appoint an administrator in order to confer standing to bring the instant suit.”

James’ attorneys didn’t ask for more time to file an amended lawsuit. She said that if they had a reasonable argument she would have allowed it to be re-filed. Since they didn’t, the suit was dismissed with prejudice. There was nothing in Osbourne’s autopsy records to suggest a “relevant analysis” of his brain was performed.

Bryant added: “It is impossible to plausibly allege, much less prove that either wrestler had CTE” and that there were no facts linking their deaths to CTE filed by their attorneys.”

Meanwhile, neither lawsuit was said to be able to prove under Connecticut law that WWE was responsible for their deaths through an “unbroken sequence of events.” Bryant said that “counsel for Plaintiffs could identify only four vague and conclusory assertions of ‘fact’ to link Frazier’s death with the more than one hundred pages of alleged wrongful conduct on the part of WWE detailed in the prolix Amended Complaint.” She said the same wording was used in the Osbourne suit as well.

The ruling said that Bryant was also turning down WWe’s motion to file sanctions against lawyer Konstantine Kyros, who also was behind the other concussion lawsuits against the company.

It noted: “The Court would be well within its broad discretion to sanction counsel for their failure to adhere to the Court’s instructions and trim the inflammatory content and unnecessary length of the carbon-copy complaints in these consolidated cases. Their failure to do so forced the Court to needlessly expend resources combing through hundreds of paragraphs of allegations, to find a single shred of relevant factual content indicating whether Plaintiffs asserted a plausible claim. In doing so, however, the Plaintiffs only further underlined for the Court the lack of substantive factual content actually contained in these complaints. Although it is perhaps a close question, the Court finds that no Rule 11 sanction is merited for counsel’s disregard of the Court’s comments at the June 8 conference.

Kyros’ false and misleading statements, identified by WWE above, together with other statements the Court has examined – including Kyros’ unprovable claim that deceased and, in at least one case, cremated former wrestlers had CTE “upon information and belief” – are highly unprofessional. These misleading, deceptive, and baseless allegations are precisely the types of statements that many state bar associations have targeted in promulgating rules of professional conduct which demand that admitted attorneys speak with candor to the trier of fact.

The Court admonishes Kyros and his co-counsel to adhere to the standards of professional conduct and to applicable rules and court orders lest they risk future sanction or referral to the Disciplinary Committee of this Court.