Legal proceedings in McGregor case not yet at an end

RTÉ News​

3 days ago

This week, the former MMA fighter Conor McGregor lost his appeal against a High Court jury's finding that he raped Nikita Hand.
The jury at the civil trial found that he raped Ms Hand in a hotel room in December 2018 and awarded her just under €250,000 in damages.
On Thursday, the Court of Appeal rejected Mr McGregor's appeal against the finding in its entirety.
It also rejected an appeal by his friend, James Lawrence, against the High Court's decision to refuse him his costs.
However, the legal proceedings are not at an end.
Here, our Legal Affairs Correspondent Órla O'Donnell reflects on the case and looks at what could come next.
On Thursday, Nikita Hand entered court number one at the Court of Appeal a few minutes before the hearing was due to start. With her, as always, was the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre's accompaniment manager, along with solicitors, Susan Hannon and David Coleman as well as some good friends.
Conor McGregor was not there. But for both sides in this case, the stakes were unimaginably high.
Mr McGregor has raged against the jury's verdict to his millions of social media followers since the case ended in November 2024. His US-based public relations executives began sending emails to media organisations within minutes of the verdict, claiming he had only been found "liable for assault" by the High Court jury.
The PR executives claimed RTÉ News and others, were wrong to say the jury's verdict meant the jurors found he had raped Nikita Hand. They continued to send such emails sporadically in the following months. Their claim has now been firmly refuted by the Court of Appeal.
Mr McGregor repeatedly accused Ms Hand of lying and laid emphasis on the fact that he had not faced any criminal charge in relation to the incident in the Beacon Hotel in December 2018. A win in his appeal would allow him to bolster his narrative that he was an innocent man facing trumped up allegations and restore his reputation.
Ms Hand on the other hand, had been "put through the wringer" - a statement by her lawyers, endorsed by the Court of Appeal. She had prevailed in "one of the most hard fought trials of recent years". But her reputation had continued to be attacked by Mr McGregor, not only in his social media posts but in his tactics in this appeal.
If Mr McGregor won, it would mean Nikita Hand would have to go through a high-profile civil trial all over again. And there was a further risk for her: If Mr McGregor's friend, James Lawrence, won his separate appeal over the refusal to award him his legal costs, then her award of just under €250,000 in damages could be wiped out and she could end up financially ruined.
Remarkably, given what was at stake, Ms Hand remained composed as the proceedings began. Sitting bolt upright between her solicitors and her support worker from the Rape Crisis Centre, she gave a quick acknowledgement to the journalists on the opposite side of the court room.
Media representatives outnumbered the lawyers in the appeal court with interest in the case from news outlets all over Ireland and further afield.
The three judges emerged, presided over by experienced former criminal barrister, Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy. The court's decision was given by Mr Justice Brian O'Moore. He said he would not read it all out, but it still took more than an hour to go through the issues.
For Ms Hand, it was a rollercoaster. At times, the outcome looked bleak. It was only when the court made its ruling on the final issue of James Lawrence's costs, that the full extent of her vindication became clear.
'Rather tawdry episode'
Mr Justice O'Moore said this was a case where the jury had to decide between Mr McGregor's description of a "rather tawdry episode" and Ms Hand's claim that a criminal offence had been committed against her.
However, the first part of the court's judgment dealt not with what happened after "four people made their way to a penthouse suite in the Beacon Hotel in Sandyford" in December 2018, but with the "dramatic events" in the Court of Appeal 30 days previously.
Mr Justice O'Moore dealt extensively with Mr McGregor's application to introduce "new evidence" which had "come to light" since the trial concluded.
This new evidence referred to the sworn statements of Samantha O'Reilly and Stephen Cummins who at one stage had lived opposite Nikita Hand in Drimnagh.
They swore affidavits about what they had seen and heard after Ms Hand returned from the Beacon Hotel on 9 December 2018. Ms O'Reilly claimed she could see into Nikita's bedroom from her bedroom and could see Nikita's boyfriend at the time, moving in a way that suggested he was assaulting her.
Mr Cummins said he heard a commotion but told Ms O'Reilly it was none of their business and didn't look himself.
Mr McGregor claimed this was a plausible explanation for severe bruising on Ms Hand's body. Ms Hand described their statements as lies and said she didn't wish to speculate about why they were lying.
Just as the appeal was about to get underway, Mr McGregor's lawyers told the court they would be withdrawing their application to introduce this evidence.
In its ruling, the Court of Appeal made it clear that they were not happy with the explanations they had been given for this decision. Mr Justice O'Moore said the affidavits were "very comprehensive and clear" and had been sworn in January this year.
Neither Ms O'Reilly nor Mr Cummins said they had any difficulty remembering the incident or expressed any doubt about their evidence. And he said they would have been stress tested by Mr McGregor's lawyers, long before the eve of the appeal hearing.
The judge said one explanation received by the court for the withdrawal of this evidence, related to the fact that Mr McGregor's lawyers had sought an additional expert opinion from a forensic pathologist, Professor Jack Crane, dealing with when Ms Hand's bruising could have been inflicted.
Seeking to introduce new expert evidence to back up an application to introduce other new evidence was admitted by Mr McGregor's lawyers to be a "legal novelty".
The first position taken by Mr McGregor's lawyers was that they had further reflected on the legal situation following written submissions on the issue from Ms Hand's lawyers, and had decided to withdraw the application.
The Court of Appeal said this was "somewhat puzzling" as there was nothing new in the submissions.
Mr McGregor's lawyers also suggested they were taking this step due to a lack of corroboration of Ms O'Reilly's evidence. But the court said it had never previously been suggested that the neighbours' evidence was dependent on Prof Crane's evidence being admitted.
Mr Justice O'Moore said Ms O'Reilly's evidence was "crisp, clear and coherent" and the only question was whether it was true. He described this explanation as an "unsustainable position".
'Privileged matters'
Mr McGregor's lawyers then claimed there were other reasons for the withdrawal of the evidence - "privileged matters" they did not intend to go into. Mr Justice O'Moore remarked that "some other factor, upon which this court does not wish to speculate, led to the abrupt decision to scuttle one of the more significant grounds of appeal".
The court was deeply unimpressed with what happened. The judge said the existence of the new witnesses had "attracted no little attention" since it was first revealed earlier this year. He said the entire import of Ms O'Reilly's evidence was that Nikita Hand's testimony was incomplete and misleading. And he said Instagram messages sent by Ms O'Reilly to Mr McGregor's sister clearly accused Ms Hand of lies.
The court ruled that Ms Hand had been completely vindicated in the position she took. Judge O'Moore said she robustly took the stance that Ms O'Reilly's evidence was wrong and the abandonment of the applications with "no plausible reason" could only be seen as an acknowledgement that she was correct.
He said by deploying the "new evidence", the McGregor side had subjected the jury's belief that Nikita Hand had been raped to "a root and branch attack".
He also said that Mr McGregor's conduct in publicly introducing evidence which fundamentally called into question the correctness of the jury's verdict and Ms Hand's testimony, only to abandon it when it was about to be tested, deserved to be marked "by a palpable sign of the court's displeasure and disapproval".
He awarded Ms Hand the costs of the proceedings relating to this issue on a "legal practitioner and own client basis" against Mr McGregor.
Awarding costs in this way, is significant and is not done regularly. Usually if someone is awarded their costs in legal proceedings they get them on a "party and party" basis. Surprisingly, it doesn't mean they get back all the costs they have actually accrued during the case.
During the costs hearing in the High Court, Ms Hand's Senior Counsel, John Gordon suggested that someone who is successful in a court case and gets their costs on the ordinary basis gets back only about 80% of what they actually spent. Other legal sources say the true figure is actually around 60-70% of what a person spends.
However awarding costs at the highest level, means someone will get back almost everything they have spent, including all the costs they have accrued with their own solicitor.
The court went on to comprehensively dismiss the first of Mr McGregor's remaining grounds of appeal – the question the jury had to answer. They were asked: "Did Conor McGregor assault Nikita Ní Láimhín (Hand), yes or no?"
Mr McGregor's lawyers had argued that some members of the jury may have been confused about what exactly they were being asked and may have decided he was liable for an ordinary assault instead of rape. They also submitted that the relatively low award of damages was not consistent with a finding of rape.
Mr Justice O'Moore ruled the trial judge could not have been clearer in explaining that what was meant by the question was rape. He said it was "simply unreal" to suggest the jury were confused, faced with the issue framed in such a "brutally clear way", even though the damages awarded were "not generous".
A more substantive ground of appeal was Mr McGregor's answers to gardaí when he was interviewed by them in connection with their investigation into Ms Hand's allegations. The trial judge allowed Mr McGregor to be cross examined about the fact that he gave a series of "no comment" answers to gardaí.
The Court of Appeal found this ruling was incorrect. And it rejected a further submission that this questioning was justifiable to allow the jury to understand the background to issues in the case.
But it ruled that the warnings given to the jury about this matter were sufficient to rule out the risk of an unfair trial.
The court also ruled against Mr McGregor on all the remaining issues, dismissing the appeal "in its entirety".
However, the issue of James Lawrence's costs remained. He argued he should have been awarded his costs as the jury had found he did not rape Ms Hand as she alleged.
Ms Hand's lawyers had suggested to the court that if he were to get his costs, her award of damages would be more than wiped out. But the Court of Appeal had signalled during the hearing that this was not something they could consider. In the court's ruling, Mr Justice O'Moore said he was unimpressed by this argument. He pointed out that alleging sexual assault against Mr Lawrence was a terribly serious thing to do.
Judge O'Moore also said he did not agree with the rationale of the trial judge for refusing Mr Lawrence his costs. Mr Justice Owens ruled that the jury's verdict meant they didn't believe Mr Lawrence's evidence about his own interactions with Ms Hand.
The Court of Appeal said this analysis was flawed. But it found the verdict could only have meant the jury didn't believe Mr Lawrence's evidence about what happened between Ms Hand and his friend, Conor McGregor.
Mr Justice O'Moore analysed Mr Lawrence's conduct, and what he said were the unusual circumstances of this case. The judge said it was "unusual" that Mr Lawrence had pleaded that he had consensual sex with Ms Hand, given that she had said she had no recollection of being sexually assaulted by him.
If he had not made this plea, it would have been a possibility that the case against Mr Lawrence would have been dismissed at the end of the evidence.
Plea made 'tactical' sense - judge
The judge said the plea made "tactical" sense by presenting an "ostensibly coherent joint narrative" between Mr Lawrence and Mr McGregor.
He also analysed the evidence given by James Lawrence on the one issue about which he said, the jury's view was not in doubt. The judge said the jury's verdict meant they believed Mr McGregor raped Nikita Hand, whereas Mr Lawrence gave evidence that the sex between Ms Hand and Mr McGregor was consensual.
Judge O'Moore said Ms Hand's account must have been believed by the jury and Mr Lawrence's account must have been rejected. Therefore he said Mr Lawrence's evidence on this issue could only be regarded as untruthful.
The court ruled that the giving of such evidence was a very serious matter, and was enough on its own to deprive Mr Lawrence of his costs.
But it found another significant factor was the evidence of Mr McGregor that he had paid those costs for Mr Lawrence.
Mr McGregor appeared to deny on social media that he ever admitted paying his friend's costs but the transcript shows that when he was asked in the witness box if he paid the fees he swore Mr Lawrence was his friend and "wouldn't have the fees for it so I believe I may have, yeah…."
Mr Justice O'Moore said part of the reason for awarding costs is to make right the damage to someone who has been wrongly sued. But he said this was pointless if someone else had paid their costs for them.
Arrangements between McGregor and Lawrence were 'shrouded in mystery' - judge
He said the arrangements between the two men were "shrouded in mystery". But he said if Mr Lawrence didn't repay Mr McGregor he would have received a bounty of several hundred thousand euro and it would not be appropriate to enrich him by providing him with money for costs that he had never had to pay.
If Mr Lawrence did repay Mr McGregor then it would mean Ms Hand would have to make a payment to a man who gave inaccurate evidence about her, and ultimately to the man who raped her. This he said should weigh heavily with the court.
The judge also pointed out that having two sets of lawyers to cross examine Ms Hand, brought significant advantages to Mr McGregor.
He dismissed Mr Lawrence's appeal, saying the appeal court had come to the same decision as the High Court judge, albeit for different reasons.
It was at this point that Nikita Hand finally relaxed. She hugged her friends and lawyers and wiped away tears as the reality of the court's decision hit home.
Outside court, holding a piece of paper in trembling hands she gave a very brief statement to the media explaining how the appeal had retraumatised her, before expressing the hope she could now finally heal.
The legal proceedings are not at an end, however. Within minutes of the court's verdict, Ms Hand's lawyers lodged papers beginning an action against Ms O'Reilly, Mr Cummins and Mr McGregor for "malicious abuse of the process of the court".
That case will take many months to come to court. On social media, in a flurry of posts, Mr McGregor welcomed the fact that "this is still ongoing", saying he believed the witnesses and criticising his own lawyers for not calling their evidence.
He reposted a post from the AI chatbot developed by Elon Musk's X, suggesting he was "innocent" from its "analysis of the evidence", notably "excluding court rulings".
He appeared to be posting from a yacht, while on holidays with his partner Dee Devlin and their children. As well as criticising Ms Hand, his lawyers and the court's decision, he published further posts suggesting he should be the next president of Ireland, describing Ms Devlin as Ireland's "first lady".
Mr McGregor can attempt to challenge the appeal court's decision but he will have to get permission from the Supreme Court. That court allows appeals in the interests of justice or where there is a point of law of general public importance.
The consequences of his withdrawal of the "new evidence" have also still to play out. The appeal court has referred the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions who may ask gardaí to investigate allegations of perjury.