Court Penalizes Ronaldo Accuser’s Las Vegas Lawyer With €310,000 In Fine

A Vegas lawyer who attempted to have Cristiano Ronaldo pay millions of dollars more than the $375,000 in hush money he gave to a Nevada woman who claimed he raped her in Las Vegas in 2009 was fined $335,000 (€310,000).

In a harsh 18-page decision, US District Judge Jennifer Dorsey stated, “I find that Ronaldo would not have incurred a majority of the fees and expenditures that he expended on this action without the plaintiff’s counsel’s bad faith.”

Leslie Mark Stovall, the attorney for Kathryn Mayorga, was ordered by the Las Vegas judge to personally pay Peter Christiansen and Kendelee Works, Ronaldo’s lead attorneys.

A Nevada state court judge recently rejected Mr. Stovall’s request for a court order to unseal critical documents, including a Las Vegas police report about Ms. Mayorga’s rape complaint against the Portuguese football star. The judge nearly made long-sealed and long-fought documents public by mistake in August.

The Clark County District Court’s Judge Jasmin Lilly-Spells determined that “the decision regarding secrecy is permanent.”

Judge Lilly-Spells cited Judge Dorsey’s prior rulings to conceal the findings of police inquiries from the public, a confidentiality agreement between Ronaldo and Ms. Mayorga from 2010, and allegedly stolen records of attorney-client conversations between Ronaldo and his lawyers.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal brought the lawsuit before Judge Lilly-Spells in state court, while the New York Times began fighting for the records’ release before Judge Dorsey in federal court.

In a statement, Mr. Christiansen praised the decisions made by the federal and state courts as well as earlier conclusions reached in the case by a US magistrate judge in Las Vegas, saying they demonstrated that “hard-working judges don’t allow lawyers to misuse the system.”

The more than four years of legal disputes have not yet come to an end as a result of the verdicts.

Mr. Stovall is requesting that Judge Dorsey’s dismissal of Ms. Mayorga’s civil complaint, which she filed in state court in September 2018 and brought to federal court in January 2019, be overturned by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The appellate judges might take both issues into account if Mr. Stovall also appeals to the monetary penalty.

Ms. Mayorga is a resident of the Las Vegas area and a former model and teacher.

One of the most recognizable sports figures in the world, Ronaldo is already 38 years old. He played professionally for European powerhouses Juventus, Real Madrid, and Manchester United while serving as captain of the Portuguese national team.

He agreed to a hefty offer in December to leave Manchester United and join the Saudi Arabian team Al Nassr. According to media estimates, the contract may pay him up to $200 million every year until June 2025, which would make him the highest-paid football player in history.

In her case, Ms. Mayorga claimed that Ronaldo or his collaborators had broken the confidentiality agreement they had made almost a decade before to the German news source Der Spiegel’s publication of an article with the same title “Cristiano Ronaldo’s Secret”, based on documents obtained from “whistleblower portal Football Leaks” in 2017.

Mr. Stovall insisted Ms. Mayorga did not violate the hush-money agreement and never wanted her name made public. She filed a lawsuit to have it thrown out, charging Ronaldo and his agents with conspiracy, slander, contract breach, coercion, and fraud.

Stovall calculated damages at $25 million plus attorneys’ costs in documents filed in 2021.

Years were spent fighting on numerous fronts by Mr. Christiansen and Ms. Works to keep the secrecy agreement secret. They said Mr. Stovall improperly used Ms. Mayorga to profit from Ronaldo’s notoriety and wealth.

Mr. Stovall claimed that because Ms. Mayorga, now 39, had learning disabilities as a child and had been subjected to undue pressure from Ronaldo’s legal team and agents, she was not in a position to agree to the dismissal of a criminal complaint she had filed soon after her encounter with Ronaldo and to accept the 375,000 dollars.

No one disputes that Ronaldo and Ms. Mayorga had sex in June 2009, but Ronaldo’s legal team insisted it was consensual and not a rape.