Kathryn Mayorga, the woman who accused Cristiano Ronaldo of rape in 2009, has had her appeal against a confidentiality settlement denied.
Mayorga accused Ronaldo, then 24, of sexual assault in a Las Vegas hotel room.
Ronaldo, asserting the encounter was consensual, settled with Mayorga and her lawyer, Leslie Mark Stovall, for $335,000 (£267,000) in 2010.
In 2017, Stovall, representing Mayorga, sought an increase in the settlement to over $25 million, citing conspiracy, defamation, breach of contract, coercion, and fraud. U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey rejected this request in June 2022, prompting Stovall to file an appeal.
Mayorga’s lawyer not only appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the dismissal but also argued that Judge Dorsey had improperly dismissed the case.
Stovall contended that the judge should not have denied Mayorga’s claims to make the 2010 confidentiality agreement public.
However, on Tuesday, a three-judge panel from the San Francisco-based court sided with Ronaldo, rejecting Mayorga’s claim. Additionally, they imposed a substantial $335,000 fine against Stovall, a rare step in cases of this nature.
An excerpt of Tuesday’s six-page ruling reads as follows: “The district court clearly recognised the gravity of dismissing the case and accordingly provided a thorough analysis, amply supported by factual findings.
[The 2010 settlement] lay dormant until 2017, when… `Football Leaks’ released hundreds of documents through a cyber hack of Ronaldo’s former attorneys.
Despite the settlement and confidentiality agreement between Ronaldo and Mayorga, Stovall sought and used documents from ‘Football Leaks’ —including those clearly marked attorney-client privileges—to prosecute a new lawsuit on behalf of Mayorga against Ronaldo.
“Judge Dorsey properly held that Ronaldo did not waive or otherwise forfeit his claim of attorney-client privilege as to the ‘Football Leaks’ documents. Before the leak, his attorneys employed cybersecurity tools to protect their files.
“As the district court noted, Ronaldo mistakenly produced the course of ‘navigating this unorthodox predicament,’ kicked off by Mayorga’s counsel’s ‘unprincipled conduct’ long before, and instituted vigorous efforts to protect the documents afterwards. The district court did not abuse its discretion when it found that a case-terminating sanction was appropriate.”
With Mayorga’s appeal not only rejected but also penalised in the form of a hefty fine for Stovall, it seems unlikely that this case will be re-opened anytime soon. It could represent the end of a case that has lasted over 14 years in its entirety.