A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday, November 22, 2023, sided with Cristiano Ronaldo in a case where Kathryn Mayorga accused him of rape.
The court rejected an appeal by Mayorga’s lawyer to force Ronaldo to pay $25 million on top of the $375,000 in hush money the footballer paid her after she accused him of raping her in 2009.
Kathryn Mayorga’s lawyer had asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a federal judge’s dismissal of the case in Las Vegas in June 2022 and reopen the civil lawsuit she filed in 2018.
The Plaintiff argued U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey should not have rejected Mayorga’s attempts to unseal and make public the confidentiality agreement she signed in 2010 in accepting payments from Ronaldo.
A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based appellate court disagreed. It also rejected Mayorga’s argument that the judge abused her discretion by dismissing the case with prejudice, which prevented her from refiling the case, and took the unusual step of levying a $335,000 fine against her lawyer, Leslie Mark Stovall.
With Mayorga’s appeal not only rejected but also penalized in the form of a hefty fine for her lawyer Stovall, it seems unlikely that this case will be re-opened anytime soon.
Mayorga accused Ronaldo, then 24, of sexual assault in a hotel bedroom in Las Vegas in 2019. The Portuguese star however maintained the act was consensual through his legal team and settled with Mayorga and her lawyer, Leslie Mark Stovall, for an amount of $335,000.
Following leaks in 2017, Stovall, on behalf of Mayorga, later asked for an increase on this settlement to upwards of $25 million in damages, citing conspiracy, defamation, breach of contract, coercion and fraud.
The appeal was rejected by U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey in June 2022, leading Stovall to lodge another appeal which was also rejected on November 22, 2023.
