A U.S. appeals court is set to hear arguments on Wednesday from lawyers trying to revive a lawsuit filed by an American woman against Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo, who currently plays for Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia. The lawyers will attempt to force Ronaldo to pay millions of dollars, in addition to the $375,000 he paid to the complainant for her silence after she accused him of raping her in Las Vegas in 2009. The woman's attorneys requested that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the United States overturn the decision to dismiss the case in June 2022 and reopen the civil lawsuit she initially filed in Nevada in 2018.
Court documents indicate that a federal judge in Nevada erred by repeatedly rejecting the woman's attempts to disclose the confidential agreement she signed in 2010 regarding the acceptance of money from Ronaldo, and to include it as evidence. It is not expected that a panel of three judges in the San Francisco-based appeals court will render an immediate ruling after questioning Ronaldo's attorney and the plaintiff, Kathryn Mayorga, during oral arguments on Wednesday in a hearing in Las Vegas.
The Las Vegas police launched an investigation in 2018 into the rape allegation against Ronaldo following Mayorga's lawsuit, but Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson decided not to file criminal charges.
