Judge denies Carcillo's appeal in class-action lawsuit against Canadian Hockey League

An Ontario Court of Appeal judge has denied former NHL player Daniel Carcillo's attempt to certify a class-action lawsuit against the Canadian Hockey League, its three major junior leagues and their teams over disturbing allegations of sexual assault and abuse of teenage players.

The suit, initially filed in 2020 with Carcillo, Garrett Taylor and Stephen Quirk as the leading plaintiffs, covers events in the Ontario Hockey League, Western Hockey League and Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League going back to 1975.

In his decision Monday, Chief Justice Michael H. Tulloch called the plaintiffs' objectives admirable, but said the proposed case was of "an unprecedented scale and complexity."

Perell's 103-page ruling quoted from sworn statements by unidentified players describing what they experienced when some were as young as 15.

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One player, identified only as FF, said he was sodomized with a hockey stick as part of a rookie initiation — an assault at least one other player said also happened to him.

Perell wrote in his decision the evidence established that players were "tortured, forcibly confined, shaved, stripped, drugged, intoxicated, physically and sexually assaulted; raped, gang raped, forced to physically and sexually assault other teammates."

He accepted the former players' evidence and described the main plaintiffs as "genuine heroes," but the judge found they had not presented a workable plan for litigating the case as a class action.

On appeal, Tulloch wrote that because the plaintiffs did not suggest a narrower or more targeted class action at the certification stage, "they cannot now seek to