A legal team representing Cristiano Ronaldo has asked a US judge to order the lawyer of a woman who accused the footballer of rape to pay him more than $626,000 (£516,000), after a rape allegation lawsuit against him was dismissed.
In June, a US judge dismissed a rape allegation lawsuit against Ronaldo, 37, because the accuser’s lawyer relied on leaked and stolen records.
Kathryn Mayorga had alleged that Ronaldo raped her at a Las Vegas hotel in 2009. Ronaldo denies the allegations and has never been charged.
In a court document published on Wednesday, Ronaldo’s attorney, Peter Christiansen, asked US District Judge Jennifer Dorsey to make Mayorga’s attorney, Leslie Mark Stovall, personally responsible for the amount.
They are due to file an answer with the court by July 8.
Dorsey this month accused Stovall of “abuses and flagrant circumvention of the proper litigation process”, adding that he had conducted himself in “bad faith” through repeated use of stolen, privileged documents to prosecute the case.
As a result, she threw out the case.
Dorsey said in a 42-page ruling published on June 10 that her decision to dismiss Mayorga’s case outright with no option to file it again was a “severe sanction”, but said Ronaldo had been harmed by Stovall’s conduct.
Ronaldo’s lawyer said on Wednesday, as per the Associated Press, that “given Stovall’s abuses and flagrant misconduct, Stovall should be made personally responsible for ensuring (Ronaldo) is reimbursed for having to defend against his vexatious and bad faith conduct.”
As first reported by German publication Der Spiegel in 2017, Ronaldo was alleged to have raped Mayorga, during a holiday in Las Vegas in 2009. Ronaldo strongly and consistently denied all accusations made against him, calling the story “fake news”.
Las Vegas Police re-investigated the crime in 2018 at the request of the victim but by the following summer had concluded that the claims could not “be proven beyond reasonable doubt”.
Ronaldo, it was ruled, would not face criminal charges.
Mayorga, who waived her right for anonymity, had been pursuing him for substantial damages through a civil lawsuit in the US.
On June 10, however, Dorsey dismissed the rape lawsuit against the Portuguese footballer.
(Photo: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
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