Cristiano Ronaldo to face new legal challenge from 2010 rape accuser over alleged hush money deal
Cristiano Ronaldo's lawyers are to return to court in a legal challenge over hush money he allegedly paid to a woman who accused him of raping her over a decade ago.
Lawyers are trying to revive the accuser's bid to force Ronaldo to pay millions more than the $375,000 (£275,000) he is said to have paid her in 2010.
Kathryn Mayorga accused the football player of raping her in a Las Vegas hotel room in June 2009. Ronaldo has always denied the claims.
A lawyer for Ms Mayorga is now asking the US Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the dismissal of the case in June 2022 and reopen the civil lawsuit she first filed in Nevada in 2018.
The appeal argues the federal court judge in Nevada erred in repeatedly rejecting the woman’s attempts to unseal and include as evidence the confidentiality agreement she signed in 2010 in accepting payments from Ronaldo.
A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based appellate court isn't expected to issue an immediate ruling after it's scheduled to question attorneys for Ronaldo and Ms Mayorga on Wednesday.
Las Vegas police re-opened a rape investigation after Ms Mayorga’s lawsuit was filed, but Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson decided in 2019 not to pursue criminal charges.
He said too much time had passed and evidence failed to show that Ms Mayorga’s accusation could be proved to a jury.
Ms Mayorga, a former teacher and model from the Las Vegas area, was 25 when she met Ronaldo at a nightclub in 2009 and went with him and others to his hotel suite.
She alleges in her lawsuit filed almost a decade later that the footballer, then 24, sexually assaulted her in a bedroom.
Ronaldo, through his lawyers, maintained the sex was consensual.
The two reached a confidentiality agreement in 2010 under which Leslie Mark Stovall acknowledged that Ms Mayorga received $375,000.
In dismissing the case last year, US District Judge Jennifer Dorsey in Las Vegas took the unusual step of levying a $335,000 (£276,800) fine against Ms Mayorga's lead lawyer, Mr Stovall, for acting in “bad faith” in filing the case on his client’s behalf.
Mr Stovall’s appeal on Ms Mayorga’s behalf - filed in March - calls Judge Dorsey’s ruling “a manifest abuse of discretion” and seeks to open the records and revive the case.
It alleges Ms Mayorga wasn’t bound by the confidentiality agreement because Ronaldo or his associates violated it before a German news outlet, Der Spiegel, published an article in April 2017 titled “Cristiano Ronaldo’s Secret”. The report was based on documents obtained from what court filings called “whistleblower portal Football Leaks.”
Ronaldo’s lawyers argued — and the judge agreed — the “Football Leaks” documents and the confidentiality agreement are the product of privileged attorney-client discussions, there is no guarantee they are authentic and can’t be considered as evidence.
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