US court to hear arguments over Ronaldo rape case settlement

Associated PressOctober 4, 2023 04:30 AM ET3 min read

A U.S. appeals court is scheduled to hear on Wednesday from lawyers seeking to revive a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars from Cristiano Ronaldo by a woman she claims raped her in Las Vegas in 2009 She, and Cristiano Ronaldo paid her $375,000 in hush money.

The woman’s attorneys asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to overturn a June 2022 decision to dismiss the case and reopen the civil lawsuit she first filed in Nevada in 2018.

The appeal says a Nevada federal court judge erred by rejecting the woman’s repeated attempts to open and introduce into evidence a confidentiality agreement she signed when she accepted payments from Ronaldo in 2010.

No immediate ruling is expected from the three-judge San Francisco Court of Appeals panel, which plans to hold oral arguments Wednesday at a special session at the law school for Ronaldo and attorneys for Ronaldo and his accuser, Katherine Mayorga. The campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Mayorga, through attorneys including Leslie Mark Stovall, agreed to have her name released.

Ronaldo is one of the most famous and richest athletes in the world. He is the captain of the Portuguese national football team and has played for Real Madrid in Spain, Manchester United in England and Juventus in Italy. After completing his second spell at Manchester United, he joined Saudi Arabian club Al Nasr earlier this year.

Las Vegas police reopened the rape investigation after Mayorga filed the lawsuit, but Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson decided in 2019 not to pursue criminal charges. He said too much time had passed and the evidence failed to show Mayorga’s charges could be proven to a jury.

Mayorga, a former teacher and model from the Las Vegas area, met Ronaldo at a nightclub in 2009 when she was 25 and went with him and others to his hotel suite. She claimed in a lawsuit filed nearly a decade later that Ronaldo, then 24, sexually assaulted her in her bedroom. Ronaldo insisted through his lawyers that the sex was consensual. The two reached a confidentiality agreement in 2010, under which Stovall admitted Mayorga received $375,000.

Last year, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey in Las Vegas took the unusual step of dismissing the case, fining Mayorga’s lead attorney Stovall $335,000 for filing the lawsuit “in bad faith” on behalf of his client. Stovall filed an appeal in March on Mayorga’s behalf, calling Dorsey’s ruling a “clear abuse of discretion” and seeking to open the record and retry the case.

Mayorga was allegedly not bound by the confidentiality agreement because it was breached by Ronaldo or his associates, German news outlet Der Spiegel published an article in April 2017 titled “The Secret of Cristiano Ronaldo” The article, which is based on documents obtained from court documents, is called the “Report Football” leak portal. ” Ronaldo’s lawyers argued – and the judge agreed – that the Football Leaks documents and confidentiality agreement were the product of discussions between privileged lawyers and their clients, there was no guarantee they were authentic and they could not be admitted into evidence.