Will Green in action for London Wasps in 2004. Photo / Getty Images
The man leading rugby’s multi-million-pound brain injury lawsuits has been accused in court of pressuring a former England international to lie about having dementia.
In an extraordinary hearing that raises questions about how solicitor Richard Boardman recruits potentially vulnerable ex-players to join his “no win, no fee” action, it emerged his law firm sued Will Green for thousands in legal and medical costs after the former Wasps prop refused to sign up to the landmark litigation.
Rylands Garth took Green to court despite an independent Harley St brain scan contradicting a diagnosis of “early-onset dementia” obtained via the firm, which proclaims online: “We can get you tested thoroughly [and pay for those costs].”
A judge dismissed Rylands’ claim, ruling that it had misrepresented its services to Green and that a letter of engagement it sent him laying these out was “at very best vague, muddled and highly confusing”.
Green also accused Rylands and Boardman of:
Green told the court: “I just think they have behaved appallingly and I would go as far to say that I am not the only person involved in this.”
Telegraph Sport is only able to reveal details of the hearing on October 4 after the judge refused an application by Rylands’ lawyer to have it held in secret, branding the request “absolutely hopeless”.
Green enjoyed a 15-year career between 1992 and 2007, lifting four Premiership titles and the Heineken Cup with Wasps and earning four England caps. His final Test was a 2003 World Cup warm-up match against Wales and he featured in the wider training squad for what remains his country’s greatest rugby triumph.
Rylands first announced its brain injury claim against rugby’s authorities in 2020. It is currently representing 295 former professional and amateur players – including World Cup winner Steve Thompson – who are suffering from a range of symptoms it claims came from head impacts sustained during their careers. At one stage it was feared that the legal action could bankrupt the entire sport.
Offering its services on a “no win, no fee” basis, including tests paid for by the firm fronted by Boardman, it subsequently launched similar claims on behalf of dozens of football and rugby league players.
It has since secured funding from legal finance and risk management firm Asertis in an echo of the “Mr Bates vs The Post Office” case involving hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly convicted of theft and fraud.
Having suffered from migraines for several years, Green took up the offer of a brain scan from Rylands after Boardman approached him about a potential “class action” against rugby’s authorities.
While he never signed a letter of engagement the firm sent him, Green travelled to London to undergo an MRI and separate neurological examination in February 2022.
He heard nothing about his diagnosis for nine months and told the court he suffered “an enormous amount of stress, anxiety and sleepless nights worrying about whether or not I had brain damage”.
He eventually had a Zoom meeting with consultant neurologist Dr Steven Allder, of which he said: “He showed me four dots on the graph which purported to be my brain and he said, without a lot of compassion, ‘It looks like you have the signs of early-onset dementia’.
“My world fell into an absolute spiral.”
In a written submission, he claimed that, when he asked for neurological reports to back up the diagnosis, Dr Allder told him they were not ready, but stressed: “They will support these findings.” Green said that, while he continued to wait for those results, Rylands kept chasing him to join its brain injury lawsuit.
He told the court: “How can you sign up for a group litigation concussion case without the knowledge that you’ve got brain damage?”
More than a year after his initial test, he sought a second opinion at a leading Harley St specialist, which he said found no sign of brain injury in its MRI and neurological tests.
In his written submission, Green said that he informed Rylands of this but “they still pressed me to sign up for the group action, sending multiple emails pressuring me to sign up”.
He added: “To do so would have perpetrated a fraud on the court because the claimant’s medical experts’ diagnosis was found to be wrong. Yet, despite this, the claimant still tried to pursue me to sign up to the group litigation.
“If a medical report was drafted, the claimant’s medical testing and/or report is fundamentally wrong in finding brain damage.”
After he refused to join the action, he was sent bills for legal and medical costs, including around £5500 for an MRI scan and neurological assessment he said cost just £1600 at the clinic he visited on Harley St.
Such tests have been offered free of charge via the RFU, Premiership Rugby and the Rugby Players’ Association for the last three years.
Written submissions to the court from Rylands and Boardman argued its November 4, 2021, letter of engagement “clearly” set out that Green could be held liable for its legal and medical costs.
Boardman, who was not present at the hearing because of what his lawyer described as a “family emergency”, wrote that he had told Green “that once he had his medical testing and the results had been received, that we would then discuss in further detail how further fees would be raised and paid”.
He argued Rylands’ costs were “not unreasonable” and that the delay in Green’s diagnosis was down to the volume of “potential claimants of the class action” to have also had scans.
Rylands’ representative also told the court that a breach of contract had been committed after Green did not dispute the terms of the letter of engagement, which made him liable for costs that included around £,500 in legal fees.
Green said the firm had even billed him for being copied in on group circular emails sent to at least 175 people.
In his written submission, he accused Rylands of multiple breaches of the SRA code of conduct, including taking “unfair advantage” of him and misleading or attempting to mislead him over its legal and medical costs and how they would be paid.
Green, who represented himself in court, said in his closing remarks: “This has taken a toll for nearly three years now. The emotional and mental strain to me and my family and the significant costs that we have had means I think they thought we would just go away and bully us. I feel pretty abused by them.
“I must stress that there are colleagues out there and friends that are struggling with cognitive issues. This is not me questioning any of them. They have found themselves in a very difficult position in their lives. But I think the underhand way that I have been treated, I would question whether others have been treated in such a way and, if they have, I think it is alarming, very alarming.”
In his ruling, Deputy District Judge Pickering found that there was a contractual agreement after Green agreed to undergo the tests, despite not signing Rylands’ letter of engagement. However, he described that letter as “at very best vague, muddled and liable to be highly confusing”.
The judge also said: “Mr Green’s whole basis for engaging with this firm was that he would get his medical testing done for free, so I would have been satisfied that you would not be liable on the basis of the misrepresentation.”
He stated that Rylands had failed to prove that its medical costs were “reasonable” and that he could not be satisfied its legal costs “have been incurred on a reasonable basis”, and dismissed the claim.
Yet even after its claim was dismissed, Rylands’ lawyer asked the judge to force Green – who spent £20,000 fighting the case – to pay the costs the firm incurred bringing the matter to court. That application was also rejected.
A spokesperson for Rylands said it believed the 37-page letter of engagement Boardman sent to Green “was very clear” but that “a revised version” had since been adopted.
He added: “As with all such documents, we keep this letter under constant review.
“We represent around 900 claimants who have suffered a form of brain injury playing the sports they adored. None have been asked to pay anything for their testing.
“This was a straightforward small debt claim, which was handled by a third-party law firm. We use highly sophisticated testing, which experts consider the best in the world, rather than the less sophisticated testing used by the NHS. Mr Green’s tests were undertaken by two highly experienced neuro-specialists, but he disagreed with the results and decided to leave the action. We asked him to pay for some of those costs, in line with the letter of engagement. We do understand these cases are highly emotive and wish Mr Green all the best.”
The spokesman confirmed that ex-players diagnosed with a brain injury via tests arranged by Rylands remained at risk of being billed for legal and medical costs if they refused to join or withdrew from the wider lawsuit.
Dr Allder declined to comment but The Telegraph has been informed that his position is he explained in his Zoom call to Green that the latter’s brain scan showed there was an issue that would require further exploration through conversations with family members before any diagnosis was finalised.
The SRA said in a statement: “We can confirm that we will be looking into this, before deciding on next steps.”
Richard Boardman has become the go-to solicitor for former rugby players who fear their careers have condemned them to the cruellest of diseases.
After the NFL agreed a US$765 million ($1.25 billion) settlement brought by more than 4500 American football players over concussion-related brain injuries in 2013, it was just a matter of time before a similar action was brought in rugby union given the similar rates in the sport. It was Boardman who took that mantle in England and Wales.
In December 2020, through a carefully planned media strategy, it was announced that 2003 World Cup winner Steve Thompson was among a group of eight players who would be taking up legal action against rugby’s authorities for what they claim was a failure to protect them from the dangers of concussion.
Boardman warned rugby was facing a “ticking timebomb” as the first generation of fully professional players reached their 40s and 50s. The hope was to build enough numbers to launch a group litigation order (GLO).
A GLO is where multiple individuals with similar claims can take a collective action against the same defendant or defendants. As of April, there were only 123 ongoing GLOs in England and Wales, many of which relate to the alleged diesel emission cover-up. Compared to class actions in the United States, GLOs are far less common in the British legal system, where they tend to be undertaken by high-profile or specialist legal firms.
In comparison to those firms, Rylands was a new kid on the block. Boardman formed Rylands Legal (now dissolved) in February 2020 and then Rylands Garth in August 2022. He is the only officer listed for both companies.
On the Rylands Garth website, it says Boardman qualified as a solicitor in 2009 and worked at “various Magic Circle and US law firms” before setting up his own firm. According to the Companies House website, Boardman was also a “television producer” in the interim and founded a variety of now-dissolved companies, including Black Star TV, Fink Media, Smudge Entertainment and Racine Media.
Boardman was successful in gathering clients for his potential GLO and, two and a half years after the initial announcement, legal action formally commenced. On 23 June 2023, the first case management hearing was heard between 169 former rugby players in their lawsuit against World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union in the High Court.
A case management hearing is supposed to set the parameters of how the case will progress to trial. There have now been three with a fourth scheduled for early January 2025 and there may well be a fifth before a trial date can be set.
The judge in the case, Senior Master Cook, has admonished both sides for their slow exchange of information which he has likened to the “wheels of death on a computer, going nowhere”. However, he reserved particular criticism for Rylands’ failure to provide the rugby authorities with the claimants’ medical records, which he described as a “gaping hole” in December, adding: “Unless the medical records are prepared properly, we’re going to have a lot of issues.”
At the third case management hearing in May, he denied Rylands’ bid to select a cohort of 45 players as test cases. “You cannot choose lead cases until there’s been a proper exchange of information rather than relying upon a self-selecting cohort,” he said.
Rylands’ close relationship with the media was noted by Senior Master Cook last year when he said in reference to the defendants that “the press seems to know more about it than you do”. It was therefore surprising a lawyer for Rylands would make an unsuccessful application for its case against Will Green to be heard behind closed doors. Boardman later apologised to Telegraph Sport, claiming to be unaware such an application had been made.