Court to hear arguments over Ronaldo rap£ case
Lawyers attempting to bring up a woman’s bid to force Cristiano Ronaldo to pay millions more than the $375,000 in hush money he paid her after she alleged he rap£d her in Las Vegas in 2009 will go before a U.S. appeals court on Wednesday.
An attorney for the woman is requesting that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverse the case’s dismissal in June 2022 and revive the civil action she originally filed in Nevada in 2018.
The appeal contends that the federal judge in Nevada erred in repeatedly denying the woman’s attempts to unseal and submit as evidence the confidentiality agreement she signed in collecting payments from Ronaldo in 2010.
A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based appellate court is not expected to issue an immediate ruling after questioning attorneys for Ronaldo and his accuser, Kathryn Mayorga, during oral arguments Wednesday at a special sitting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas law school. Mayorga consented to her name being made public through her lawyers, including Leslie Mark Stovall.
Ronaldo is one of the world’s most well-known and wealthy athletes. He is the captain of Portugal’s national team and has previously played for Real Madrid, Manchester United in England, and Juventus in Italy. He joined Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr at the start of the year after leaving Manchester United for the second time.
Following Mayorga’s complaint, Las Vegas police reopened a rap£ investigation, but Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson chose not to pursue criminal charges in 2019. He claimed that too much time had gone and that evidence had failed to demonstrate that Mayorga’s accusation could be proven to a jury.
Mayorga, a former teacher and model from Las Vegas, was 25 when she met Ronaldo at a nightclub in 2009 and went to his hotel suite with him and others. In a complaint filed nearly a decade later, she claims Ronaldo, then 24, sexuaIIy attacked her in a bedroom. Ronaldo‘s lawyers insisted it was a mutual agreement. In 2010, the two negotiated a confidentiality agreement in which Stovall acknowledged Mayorga earned $375,000.
When she dismissed the case last year, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey in Las Vegas took the unusual step of fining Mayorga’s lead lawyer, Stovall, $335,000 for acting in “bad faith” in filing the case on his client’s behalf. Stovall’s appeal on Mayorga’s behalf, filed in March, calls Dorsey’s ruling “a manifest abuse of discretion,” and seeks to open the records and revive the case.
