A United States appeals court planned to hear Wednesday from lawyers trying to revive a woman’s bid to force international soccer starto pay millions more than the $375,000 in hush money he paid her after she accused him of raping her in Las Vegas in 2009.
The appeal argues the federal court judge in Nevada erred in repeatedly rejecting the woman’s attempts to unseal and include as evidence the confidentiality agreement she signed in 2010 in accepting payments from Ronaldo. Mayorga, a former teacher and model from the Las Vegas area, was 25 when she met Ronaldo at a nightclub in 2009 and went with him and other people to his hotel suite. She alleges in her lawsuit filed almost a decade later that the soccer star, then 24, sexually assaulted her in a bedroom.
In dismissing the case last year, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey in Las Vegas took the unusual step of levying a $335,000 fine against Mayorga's lead lawyer, Stovall, for acting in"bad faith" in filing the case on his client’s behalf.