LONDON, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Former English Premier League player Sylvan Ebanks-Blake on Thursday won the first stage of his multi-million-pound lawsuit against a specialist sports surgeon for negligence, as he argues he was denied another five years as a high-level professional.
Ebanks-Blake was playing for Wolverhampton Wanderers in the second-tier Championship when he suffered a broken fibula towards the end of the 2012-13 season.
He was referred to orthopaedic surgeon James Calder, who fixed the fracture and also performed surgery on his ankle – which he had injured in 2005 as a Manchester United academy player – to remove scar tissue and loose cartilage.
Ebanks-Blake, now 39, says the ankle surgery was unnecessary and caused pain when he put weight on the joint, in a lawsuit at London's High Court reportedly seeking 7 million pounds ($9.37 million).
Calder's lawyers argued Ebanks-Blake's earlier ankle injury had not been properly treated and that the surgery actually prolonged Ebanks-Blake's career, which lasted until 2019.
Judge Christina Lambert ruled the decision to do the ankle surgery "was neither reasonable nor logical", adding that "the ankle should have been left alone and monitored".
She also ruled that the surgery had caused Ebanks-Blake's ankle pain and that, without the surgery, he "would have returned to his pre-accident pain-free state".
Lambert said his ankle "would have remained pain free for a period of three to five years during which time he would have been capable of playing football at a high level".
The judge added, however, that whether Ebanks-Blake would have continued playing at a high level "is a very different question indeed" to be decided at a later trial.
($1 = 0.7467 pounds)
(Reporting by Sam TobinEditing by Toby Davis)
