Shashwati Chowdhury
Published on: June 12, 2022 at 18:00 IST
Cristiano Ronaldo will not be required to pay millions of dollars to a Nevada woman who accused him of rape in a civil lawsuit.
Ronaldo, 37, is one of the most well-known and well-paid athletes in the world. He now plays for Manchester United in the English Premier League and has captained Portugal’s national team.
Mayorga, a former model, claims she met Ronaldo in a nightclub in June 2009 and went back to his hotel suite with him and other people. Ronaldo allegedly assaulted her in a bedroom.
Ronaldo has claimed that the encounter was consensual. According to police and prosecutors, the criminal investigation was dropped when Mayorga refused to identify Ronaldo by name and wouldn’t explain where the incident occurred.
Mayorga received a settlement of more than $375,000 from Ronaldo. However, after news about the incident appeared in Germany’s Der Spiegel in 2017, it was claimed that a confidentiality agreement had been broken. The woman decided to re-file her civil action as a result of this. The lawsuit claimed that the leak was caused by Ronaldo or his associates.
The reports, according to Ronaldo’s legal team, are the result of electronic data leaks from law firms and other European entities.
When Mayorga filed her civil complaint, the criminal case was reopened by Las Vegas police, but prosecutors decided not to pursue a criminal case again in 2019.
The civil case against Ronaldo was dismissed by US District Court Judge Jennifer Dorsey on Friday. The judge barred the lawsuit from being refiled and cited Kathryn Mayorga’s attorney, Leslie Mark Stovall, for “bad-faith conduct” and the use of “purloined” confidential documents, which tainted the case beyond redemption, according to the judge. The woman’s accusation against Ronaldo allegedly caused him injury, according to the 42-page document.
