Conor McGregor has lost his appeal against a civil jury finding in favour of Nikita Hand, who sued him over alleged rape of her in a Dublin hotel.
The three judge Court of Appeal, in a unanimous judgment on Thursday, dismissed all grounds of the appeal. Ms Hand, accompanied by friends and supporters, was in court for the ruling. Mr McGregor was not present.
Mr McGregor had denied rape and claimed he had consensual and “vigorous” sex with Ms Hand in the Beacon hotel on December 9th 2018. Last November, a High Court jury found Mr McGregor had assaulted Ms Hand and awarded her €250,000 damages.
Photo shows Nikita Hand arriving at the Court of Appeal. Photograph: Collins Courts/ CC
An order requiring Mr McGregor to pay Ms Hand’s estimated €1.3m legal costs was stayed pending the outcome of the appeal. The appeal court on Thursday ordered Ms Hand should get her costs in the High Court and appeal court against Mr McGregor.
It separately dismissed an appeal by James Lawrence (36), of Rafters Road, Drimnagh, against a refusal to award him his legal costs against Ms Hand after the jury found he had not assaulted Ms Hand after Mr McGregor left the hotel. Ms Hand and Mr Lawrence – whose costs were paid by Mr McGregor – should pay their own costs regarding that particular claim, it ruled.
The court said the jury must not have accepted Mr Lawrence’s evidence of consensual sex between Ms Hand and Mr McGregor. That, and the fact his costs were paid by Mr McGregor in an arrangement “shrouded in mystery”, would constitute special cause for not awarding costs to him against Ms Hand.
Another “free standing” reason why Mr Lawrence should not get costs against Ms Hand was that, if he were to pass on costs to Mr McGregor, that would mean she would be paying costs “initially to a man who gave inaccurate evidence against her and ultimately to the man who raped her”, it said.
Speaking outside court afterwards, Ms Hand said: “Today I can finally move on and try to heal.”
Nikita Hand speaks to the media at the High Court after Conor McGregor loses his appeal over the verdict in the civil rape case. Video: Stephen Conneely
She thanked her lawyers, the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, and all who believed and supported her throughout her “long and painful journey”.
“This appeal has retraumatised me over and over again, I’ve been forced to relive it. What happened has had a huge impact on me.”
“To every survivor out there, I know how hard it is but please don’t be silent. You deserve to be heard. You also deserve justice.”
In the appeal court judgment, Mr Justice Brian O’Moore, sitting with Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy and Mr Justice Michael McGrath, said the jury had to decide in essence between Mr McGregor’s description of “a rather tawdry episode” and Ms Hand’s claim a criminal offence had been committed against her.
After what Mr McGregor “abruptly” abandoned a bid to call fresh evidence for the appeal, it had proceeded on two core grounds, he noted.
The first was Mr McGregor’s claim the trial judge, Mr Justice Alexander Ownes erred in directing the High Court civil jury should be asked to decide whether he “assaulted”, rather than “sexually assaulted”, Ms Hand.
Dismissing that ground of appeal, Mr Justice O’Moore said Mr Justice Owens’ charge could have left the jury in no doubt that the question they were answering when deciding whether Mr McGregor assaulted Ms Hand was whether or not Mr McGregor assaulted Ms Hand “by raping her”.
The trial judge “brutally clear” charge had made clear, while the question referred to “assault”, the case was in fact “all about sexual assault or, as the trial judge said on numerous occasions, whether or not Mr McGregor raped Ms Hand.
While Mr McGregor’s side argued the sum of damages was not consistent with a finding of rape or sexual assault, the reason why no award of aggravated damages was made was something that must remain with the jury, he said.
Addressing another core ground of appeal, he found the trial judge erred in a ruling permitting a line of cross-examination concerning Mr McGregor’s multiple ‘no comment’ responses to investigating gardaí after providing them with a pre-prepared statement in response to Ms Hand’s rape claim.
The trial judge did not correctly analyse the evidence on which he based his ruling, Mr justice O’Moore said.
However, the trial judge, throughout his ruling, was alive to the fact the jury had to be warned the no comment answers could not be allowed give rise to any inference of guilt on the part of Mr McGregor as to the alleged rape of Ms Hand, he said.
There was “an unimpeachable exposition” by the trial judge to the jury about the legal position relating to the no comment answers, he said.
Mr McGregor had failed to show he was prejudiced by the treatment of the no comment answers and had not shown there was a real risk of an unfair trial, he held.
The court dismissed all other grounds of appeal, including a claim Mr McGregor’s side was deprived of the right of an effective cross-examination in relation to the availability of expert reports.
The court also ruled Ms Hand was entitled to costs at the highest solicitor-client level of the last-minute withdrawal, in what Mr Justice O’Moore described as “mysterious” circumstances, of two motions brought by Mr McGregor seeking to have fresh evidence admitted.
The judge did not think counsel for Ms Hand was “exaggerating” in saying the emergence of this new evidence had put his client “through the wringer”.
Had it been put to Ms Hand at the trial such evidence would be given but was not ultimately given, she could have legitimately sought aggravated damages, he said. While the appeal court could not award damages, it could award costs to her at the highest level concerning this withdrawal.
Mr McGregor had claimed the fresh evidence bolstered his insistence he was not responsible for bruising on the body of Ms Hand noted by a doctor who examined her on December 10th 2018.
The fresh evidence included sworn statements from Samantha O’Reilly and Steven Cummins, who lived across the road from Ms Hand in Drimnagh in late 2018. In an affidavit sworn last January, Ms O’Reilly claimed she had witnessed, from her home, a physical altercation between Ms Hand and her then partner Stephen Redmond in their home on the night of December 9/10th 2018.
In an affidavit, Ms Hand described her neighbours’ claims as lies and said Mr Redmond never assaulted her that night or at any time during their relationship.
After the application to admit the neighbours’ evidence was dramatically withdrawn by Mr McGregor’s side at the outset of the appeal on July 1st, the court granted Ms Hand’s lawyers application to have the matter referred for consideration of possible perjury, including possible induced perjury by Mr McGregor.
According to court sources, the normal procedure when such referrals are made is that the materials re sent by the DPP to An Garda Síochána and the latter then considers whether they involve possible perjury.
