London's high court has ruled that more than 500 former rugby union and league players can proceed with their lawsuits over neurological injuries, despite their former lawyers' failure to cough up key medical evidence to governing bodies. In a move that will surely delight anyone who enjoys watching legal drama unfold in slow motion, Judge Jeremy Cook decided on Friday that the cases can continue - provided the missing documents eventually see the light of day.

World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union, the Welsh Rugby Union, the Rugby Football League, and the British Amateur Rugby League Association had been hoping to dismiss the cases, arguing that the claimants' lawyers repeatedly failed to provide the necessary records. But the claimants' legal team countered that they'd handed over the vast majority of documents and stressed the litigation's wider importance for contact sports in the UK.

Judge Cook, in his written ruling, noted with a hint of reluctance that the cases could proceed, subject to the production of the missing documents, and graciously added that the “individual claimants are blameless.” He admitted he decided “with some hesitation” to let the cases go to trial, but pointed to “exceptional circumstances” and the case's “particular element of public importance going beyond the individual claims.”

“This litigation has the potential to greatly impact the way in which one of our national sports is conducted at amateur and professional levels,” Cook wrote, before acknowledging the countervailing public interest in efficient litigation - a nod to the fact that lawyers' paperwork skills are apparently as crucial as their courtroom prowess.

Nearly 800 former rugby union players, including England's 2003 World Cup winners Steve Thompson and Phil Vickery, are suing World Rugby, the RFU, and the WRU, while more than 300 former rugby league players are also taking legal action. The players claim that repeated concussive and sub-concussive blows left them with serious neurological conditions, and accuse the governing bodies of breaching their duty of care by failing to protect them from these risks.

The governing bodies, on the other hand, dispute the existence of any such duty of care extending to long-term neurological risks, with World Rugby arguing in its written defence that injuries are an “inherent risk” in rugby - a stance that might sound more reassuring if it weren't for the mounting evidence to the contrary.