MMA fighter Conor McGregor has been ordered not to disseminate CCTV footage from the civil rape case brought against him by Nikita Hand.
A judge today directed McGregor not to use the pieces of evidence from the High Court case to “suit himself” in the “court of public opinion.”
In November, a High Court jury found in Nikita Hand’s favour after she claimed that McGregor had raped her in a Dublin hotel in December 2018. Ms Hand was awarded almost €250,000 in damages. In December, a judge ruled that the MMA star must pay the legal costs of Ms Hand.
Conor McGregor denies that he raped Ms Hand and has stated that he will appeal the ruling.
Legal representatives for Mr McGregor were back in court today. The hearing heard that Ms Hand wants to restrain the publication of CCTV footage used in the trial. However, Mr McGregor’s barrister insisted that an injunction was unwarranted.
Remy Farrell, SC, representing McGregor, told Mr Justice Alexander Owens on Thursday that the footage had been of “central importance” in the trial, and he requested an adjournment of the application by Ms Hand to restrain its publication. He further said that his client, Mr McGregor, has not disseminated the CCTV, and wants an opportunity to put matters on affidavit.
The CCTV in question was played to the jury and shows Ms Hand interacting with Mr McGregor and Mr Lawrence in the car park and in the elevator to and from the hotel’s penthouse suite.
During the trial, Ms Hand said that she had no recollection of the CCTV footage from the hotel, which showed her putting her arms around James Lawrence, and on another occasion, kissing McGregor’s arm in the hotel lift. Under cross-examination, Ms Hand denied that the footage contradicted her claims, and admitted she found the footage hard to watch as she was “very drunk.” However, she said the video evidence did not take away from the fact she had been “brutally raped and battered.”
“I don’t feel like it’s wrong because I don’t remember any of it,” she said under cross-examination, adding: “I know it’s me in the CCTV, but it’s not my character,” she said, adding, “I’m not acting normal.”
Today, Mr Farrell said it is a “very curious idea” that evidence in the case “goes into a black box at the end of the case.”
Mr Justice Owens, meanwhile, said that it seemed that Mr McGregor, “by winks and nudges” wanted to get “into the court of public opinion” by “selectively” using “pieces of the case to suit himself”.
However, Mr Farrell said that he wanted to put matters on affidavit and that there were inaccuracies in the information presented to the court with regards to the application.
The hearing was already due to take place today to deal with the matter of costs, as well as social media posts from McGregor since the trial finished.
Nikita Hand, through her lawyers, also asked the judge to direct an interim payment to her lawyers of half of her legal costs, which total €1.3 million.
Mr Justice Owens is considering whether or not to take action against Mr McGregor over a post he put on social media in the wake of the jury’s verdict, which he said implied that it was a “kangaroo court” which ruled against him. The decision will be issued with regards to this on Thursday afternoon.
Counsel for Mr McGregor also indicated they would be lodging an appeal to the original High Court decision. McGregor’s legal team said that the grounds of a potential appeal centred on a number of things, including the wording of questions put to the jury. Mr Farrell said that the fact the civil jury was asked to decide whether Ms Hand was assaulted rather than sexually assaulted raised issues concerning the interpretation of the verdict.
Documents supporting Ms Hand’s legal tram’s application said that the CCTV footage appears to have been disseminated – initially limited to McGregor’s partner, Dee Devlin. Ms Hand’s solicitor, Dave Coleman, claimed that Devlin had “inappropriately” commented on its content in a social media post last November. In addition, he said news articles published in the Sunday World and Sunday Independent in January referred to the “imminent publication” of the CCTV footage by an Italian business associate of McGregor’s, Mr Gabriel Ernesto Rapisarda.
Ms Hand said today that she was alarmed by comments made by the business associate, suggesting that the video would be released “this month,”
Her barrister, Ray Boland, claimed that it was clear McGregor intends to publish the CCTV “with a view to undermining and discrediting the verdict of the jury.”
During today’s hearing, which neither McGregor nor Hand attended in person, the High Court heard that Mr Rapisarda, McGregor’s Italian stout distributor, had stated on Instagram that sales of the drink would “positively explode” when the CCTV footage was released to the public.
Justice Alexander Owens said that if the CCTV evidence was shared online, it would quickly make its way to the “furthest corner of the Internet,” and would be used “for the purpose of influencing.”