Seven of the eight ring boy plaintiffs will continue in their lawsuit against WWE, TKO, Vince McMahon, and Linda McMahon. The ruling on Thursday also distinguished which former ring attendants have claims against which defendants.
The judge did not, and at this stage could not, make any decision about whether the plaintiffs’ accounts of sexual abuse are true, nor whether the defendants were negligent. The defendants all have denied responsibility for any alleged abuse. The plaintiffs’ allegations, which include many claims of abuse by the late ring announcer Mel Phillips, during their work as minors for the World Wrestling Federation in the 1970s through the early 1990s, were treated as true only for the purposes of deciding the motions to dismiss. Phillips died in 2012.
The plaintiffs accuse the defendants of negligence leading to their alleged abuse, which they recounted in detail in their complaint. The judge stated that most of the plaintiffs “plausibly pled” their case, which was crucial to those claims’ legal survival.
The allegations of two of the ring boys, John Doe 2 and 6, will proceed with their cases against Linda McMahon, who is the current U.S. Secretary of Education and was a leading WWE executive until 2009.
All seven of the remaining plaintiffs will proceed with their claims against the company and Vince McMahon.
John Doe 7’s claims, which were the earliest of all, set in the 1970s, were dismissed by the judge against all defendants, though that plaintiff could refile his claims.
On the surviving claims, Judge James K. Bredar rejected the defendants’ arguments that the plaintiffs’ allegations should be dismissed due to a lack of jurisdiction in Maryland, where the case is being litigated in federal court. That venue is critical to the ring boys’ claims’ legal viability because Maryland, unlike most states, recently removed any time limits within which claimants can bring civil lawsuits against those they say are responsible for sexual abuse they suffered when they were children. The Maryland Child Victims Act of 2023 was upheld in a Maryland Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, which was another hurdle passed allowing this case to continue.
Requests for comment sent separately to press contacts for WWE and TKO, Vince McMahon’s representatives, Linda McMahon’s attorney, and the Department of Education were not immediately responded to.
In a filing earlier this year, lawyers for WWE disclaimed responsibility for Phillips’ conduct. They wrote: “[A]ny alleged sexual abuse by Phillips in Maryland was plainly outside the scope of his employment, which means he was not acting as an agent of WWF (or TKO or WWE) at the time of the events.”
In a motion filed in April, counsel for Vince McMahon denied he had any knowledge or involvement in the alleged abuse. “The Complaint attempts to manufacture such knowledge by spouting a broad catalog of negative press, unfounded opinions, speculation, and multi-level hearsay from a hodgepodge of characters (many of whom are deceased),” his attorneys wrote.
Last year, Linda McMahon’s attorney and former WWE General Counsel Laura Brevetti called the lawsuit “baseless” and “filled with scurrilous lies, exaggerations, and misrepresentations.”
In a press release from DiCello Levitt, the law firm representing the ring boys, Greg Gutzler, a key attorney for the plaintiffs, stated, “Today’s ruling affirms that our clients’ allegations deserve to be heard in court and marks a significant step forward for these survivors.”
“For too long, these survivors carried this burden alone,” Adam Prom, a partner at the firm, added. “We will fight vigorously to secure the justice they were denied for decades and pursue redress from those who failed to protect them.”
The judge also ruled to that the parties must meet to decided whether to allow the plaintiffs’ to continue using “John Doe” pseudonyms. Their identities have already been disclosed to the defendants, related to a previous court order.
In a 41-page opinion, Bredar wrote that most of the ring boys “plausibly pled that the adults around them—including Vincent and Linda McMahon—had relevant knowledge at relevant times, and that they could and should have taken action to prevent the abuse and the harm that ensued.”
“[T]he next question is whether there is evidence to sustain the various allegations and accusations. That, of course, remains to be seen,” Bredar said.
Bredar, whose decision on this matter had been pending since late August, stated that the case will now move to the discovery phase. In that stage, the parties will be able to request evidence from one another to support their arguments. This could include depositions, interviews under oath conducted by attorneys for the various parties.
“Through discovery, we will obtain documents and testimony that shed further light on who knew about this terrible abuse and how it was allowed to persist,” Gutzler also said in his firm’s announcement. “We look forward to uncovering the truth and pursuing accountability for survivors who have waited decades to tell their stories.”
Pertaining specifically to WWE, the judge’s opinion stated that, treating the plaintiffs’ allegations as true at this stage, WWE did have a “duty to control the conduct of its employee, Phillips,” even if the alleged abuse largely occurred at hotels before or after wrestling events, rather than at the arenas where events were held. Supporting that decision, Bredar points to allegations that the company provided the hotels in at least some cases and that Phillips was provided with funding to use at hotels where he and the ring boys stayed. Bredar also pointed to past federal cases that recognized an employee’s “work environment” can extend beyond the primary job site, including employer-arranged hotels and other work-related locations, when evaluating negligence claims involving sexual misconduct.
The judge found that the plaintiffs also plausibly alleged that WWE knew enough about Phillips’ behavior. The complaint describes both general awareness inside the company and a specific incident in the early 1980s in which Phillips was purportedly caught by a security guard sexually abusing a child in a car. The plaintiffs say Phillips was then brought to Vince McMahon. If that allegation is true, Bredar said, WWE would have understood the need to intervene.
“This allegation alone, viewed in the light most favorable to the Plaintiffs, is sufficient to plead WWE’s knowledge of the need to control Phillips in his interactions with children,” Bredar wrote. “Even apart from any other interventions WWE may have taken to protect future Ring Boys against Phillips’ abuse, at minimum, it most certainly could have terminated his employment with WWE.”
Bredar explained that Doe 7’s claims were dismissed because the alleged abuse against that plaintiff occurred during the 1970s. That’s before the complaint alleges WWE had any specific knowledge of Phillips’ claimed misconduct. Without allegations showing that WWE had reason to control Phillips at that time, the judge found Doe 7 had not pleaded with “adequate specificity” that WWE owed him a duty of care necessary to support a negligence claim.
The judge also found that the plaintiffs plausibly alleged that WWE “ratified” Phillips’ conduct. That means that the company may have effectively accepted the alleged misconduct by failing to stop it despite knowing what was happening. The complaint describes how, in 1988, Phillips was fired after the McMahons were warned about his behavior, but they rehired him weeks later. The judge explained that the ring boys do not need to show that WWE or the McMahons knew about each plaintiff individually at that stage but, instead, that claim is enough to allege WWE knew about similar abuse and allowed Phillips to continue in his role in which he was responsible for the ring crew.
Both WWE and TKO entities will remain defendants. Bredar rejected TKO’s argument that the parent entity should be dropped from the case because it couldn’t be sued in Maryland as WWE’s successor. The judge said the plaintiffs had plausibly alleged that TKO took on WWE’s legal responsibilities when the companies merged in 2023. He noted that Linda McMahon herself, in a previous sworn declaration in this case, described TKO as “WWE’s successor company.” For those reasons, the court ruled that both WWE and TKO can be sued in Maryland for the claims that are moving forward.
The defendants also sought to have the case dismissed in Maryland because none of them live or are based there, and because the alleged negligence, they said, did not arise from their activity in the state. The ring boys’ counsel argued that WWE ran hundreds of events in Maryland during the relevant years and alleged the plaintiffs were abused in the state in connection with the company’s events. Bredar ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on that, finding WWE and the McMahons purposefully conducted business in Maryland, sufficient to keep the case where the statute of limitations on their claims is unbound.
“[E]ach one of the Plaintiffs alleges that he was sexually abused by Phillips in Maryland either at or immediately before or after a Maryland show,” Bredar noted. “These allegations suffice to establish a primafacie case of specific jurisdiction,” meaning that in the judge’s view the plaintiffs showed enough at this early stage to justify continuing to hear the case in the state.
