Cristiano Ronaldo, a Manchester United and Portugal star, was accused of raping a lady in a Las Vegas hotel room in 2009. A $25 million lawsuit has been dismissed, and the lawyer who filed it has been chastised.
A US court has rejected a $25 million (€23.77 million) rape lawsuit against Manchester United player Cristiano Ronaldo.
In September 2018, Kathryn Mayorga filed a civil case against Ronaldo, alleging he raped her in a Las Vegas hotel penthouse room in 2009 and then paid her $375,000 in hush money.
In addition, the complaint accused the Portuguese player or his team of violating a confidentiality provision in their cash settlement over the alleged sexual assault in 2010.
Ronaldo has categorically refuted the allegations. His legal team maintained that the couple had consensual intercourse and that the following release of their settlement resulted from a hacking event.
What was the judge’s decision?
Judge Jennifer Dorsey of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada dismissed the case, blaming Mayorga’s attorney, Leslie Mark Stovall, for “bad-faith behavior” throughout the complaint.
Dorsey accused Stovall of “abuses and brazen circumvention of the normal legal procedure” in a 42-page judgment posted Friday but only picked up by US media on Saturday.
She condemned Stovall’s use of leaked and stolen papers describing Ronaldo’s attorney-client conversations with his attorneys.
Dorsey said that the lawyer’s activities had ruined the case and that Ronaldo had been injured legally.
The ruling stated, “I find that the procurement and continued use of these documents were in malice, and merely disqualifying Stovall would not remedy the prejudice to Ronaldo because of misappropriated paperwork and their confidential contents are woven through the very fabric of (plaintiff Kathryn) Mayorga’s claims.” “Harsh punishments are warranted.”
Consequently, the court said, “Mayorga loses her ability to pursue this action.”
What were the specifics of the lawsuit?
According to Mayorga’s complaint, they met at a Las Vegas nightclub in June 2009.
According to the report, she proceeded to the soccer star’s hotel suite with other individuals, where she said he raped her in a bedroom.
At the time, he was 24 years old, and she was 25.
Mayorga’s counsel also claimed that his client was under such duress from Ronaldo’s lawyers and agents that she could not agree to abandon her criminal case and take the hush money.
Her lawyer had sought more compensation based on charges that Ronaldo or his friends broke a 2010 confidentiality agreement by allowing stories about the financial settlement to surface in European news sources.
In 2018, the German magazine Der Spiegel released a story based on information acquired from the whistleblower web Football Leaks.
Ronaldo’s legal team blamed the claims on electronic data dumps of papers obtained from law firms and other European companies and then sold.
The footballer’s counsel also claimed that information was changed or invented.
Mayorga went to the police immediately after their encounter. Still, the inquiry was abandoned because she could not identify her claimed assailant by name or state where the event occurred, according to police and prosecutors.
Following Mayorga’s complaint, Las Vegas police reopened their rape investigation, but Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson chose not to pursue criminal charges in 2019.
Ronaldo, at 37, is one of the world’s most well-paid and well-known athletes.
He played for Real Madrid and Juventus before returning to Manchester United and led the Portuguese national side.
He is a five-time winner of the Ballon D’Or, which honors the world’s finest soccer player yearly.
