Dozens of former professional wrestlers have filed a proposed class-action civil suit against World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), alleging that the organization should be held accountable for "long-term neurological injuries" that the performers suffered while body-slamming and pile-driving each other throughout the decades.

The 214-page suit, filed in United States District Court in Connecticut on Monday, includes among its 53 plaintiffs the famous-wrestler likes of Chavo Guerrero Jr, Joseph "Road Warrior Animal" Laurinaitis, James "Kamala" Harris, Paul "Mr Wonderful" Orndorff, and Jimmy "Supafly" Snuka. The lengthy suit attempts to hold the WWE responsible for its performers' issues with concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the brain-ravaging disease that figured largely in recent class-action suits filed by players' associations for the NFL and NHL American sports leagues.

CTE, a degenerative disease linked to repeated concussions that leads to memory loss, dementia, and suicidality, has been connected to injuries in many professional sports leagues, and the WWE is no exception. Among the more notorious examples is that of former WWE wrestler Chris Benoit, whose issues with CTE were confirmed after his murder-suicide case in 2007.

The suit makes its case in multiple ways: first, by holding the league responsible for "very specific [wrestling] moves that are scripted, controlled, directed and choreographed" by the organization, all of which contributed to plaintiffs' brain trauma; second, by "fraudulently misrepresent[ing] and conceal[ing]" how performers' health would be affected by participating in the league's required activities; third, by offering "inconsistent and misleading positions about the nature of CTE and its relationship to head trauma in wrestling;" and fourth, by heavily controlling wrestlers' day-to-day lives in such a way that the league was that much more responsible to impart medical advice.

Among the ways the suit alleges that the WWE knew about the long-term damage of CTE is a 1995 TV broadcast with Shawn "Heartbreak Kid" Michaels that saw the wrestler returning to action with an actor posing as a doctor warning him about post-concussion issues. Michaels is not named as a plaintiff in the suit.

The suit also sees the plaintiffs arguing their way around their independent-contractor status, as opposed to being salaried employees with union representation. Many of the attached documents in the initial filing revolve around employee contracts and tax filings, and the suit alleges that the league "effectively eliminated WWE’s wrestlers’ knowledge of any employment rights they had under federal and state law."

Research regarding the brains of professional wrestlers and CTE may have slowed in one particular case, according to one allegation based on a Boston Globe report: that a concussion-research organization, founded by ex-WWE wrestler Chris Nowinski, has not acquired a single wrestler's brain for possible CTE research since accepting $2.3 million in grant money from the WWE in 2013.

The WWE offered a public statement calling the lawsuit "ridiculous" and pointing out that prior class-action suits had been filed by one of the case's six lawyers, Konstantine Kyros. "A federal judge has already found that this lawyer made patently false allegations about WWE, and this is more of the same," the WWE wrote. "We’re confident this lawsuit will suffer the same fate as his prior attempts and be dismissed." In another Boston Globe report, Kyros argued that the WWE mischaracterized a federal judge's verdict.