Sport Liability and Concussion — Legalign Global Update

Sports concussion claims are sitting high on the agenda of insurers likely to be impacted by them. This global issue is gaining increasing exposure in the international media.

On 9 March 2021, the UK Government launched a select committee to examine the scientific evidence and links between head injury and dementia across all sports where there is a risk.

Following the 2016 litigation against the NFL, the US is seeing an increasing number of sports injury related legal actions across a widening range of sports.

While in Australia, concussion litigation is a growing risk and continues to gain momentum with ongoing rumblings of potential class actions being advanced, as well as isolated claims commenced by individual players against their clubs alleging chronic traumatic encephalopathy-like symptoms arising from the mismanagement of their concussive incidents leading to early retirement.

AI and data harvesting are also playing a role to better understand injury risks for individual players and the factors influencing these risks.

This Legalign Global update draws together insight and opinion shared by legal experts from DAC Beachcroft (UK), Wilson Elser (USA) and Wotton + Kearney (Australia), as well as Counsel and tech experts from a recent Sports Liability & Concussion webinar.

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