Judge dismisses rape lawsuit against Cristiano Ronaldo

A lawsuit alleging Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo raped a woman in 2009 was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey on Friday due to the conduct of the woman's attorney, according to The Associated Press.

It was alleged in a 2018 lawsuit that Ronaldo, 37, sexually assaulted a woman in a Las Vegas hotel suite when he was 24. Ronaldo's legal team did not deny that the two parties had a sexual encounter in 2009, but said that it was consensual.

Dorsey said in her order to dismiss the case that the woman's attorney, Leslie Mark Stovall, tainted the case by using leaked and stolen documents detailing discussions between Ronaldo and his legal team.

"I find that the procurement and continued use of these documents was bad faith, and simply disqualifying Stovall will not cure the prejudice to Ronaldo because the misappropriated documents and their confidential contents have been woven into the very fabric of (plaintiff Kathryn) Mayorga's claims. Harsh sanctions are merited," the ruling reads, per the AP, which wrote that the plaintiff consented to the publication of her name.

In 2010, Mayorga received $375,000 and signed a confidentiality agreement to settle her claims against Ronaldo. The soccer star's legal team acknowledged the settlement in 2019 court documents, but said that the agreement "in no way conceded" that the encounter was non-consensual.

The case reopened nearly a decade after the encounter when German news outlet Der Spiegel published a detailed account of the allegations in 2017. In September 2018, Mayorga went public with the allegations. Ronaldo responded to the story at the time by calling it "fake news."