Conor McGregor has lost his civil jury appeal against a finding that he sexually assaulted a woman in 2018.
Mr McGregor, 37, was ordered to pay nearly €250,000 in damages, plus costs, to Nikita Hand, 35, last November, after she accused him of raping her at a hotel in Dublin.
The MMA fighter denied the allegation and said he had ‘fully consensual sex’ with the plaintiff, also known as Nikita Ni Laimhin. He denied causing bruising to the plaintiff.
McGregor launched an appeal on the basis of five grounds, one of which involved new evidence that was dramatically withdrawn at a hearing earlier this month.
Reading out the judgment on behalf of the three-judge panel, Mr Justice Brian O’Moore summarised the grounds for appeal before explaining the Court of Appeal’s reasons for dismissing all five grounds.
‘I therefore dismiss the appeal in its entirety,’ he said.
Ms Hand was in court for the delivery of the judgment, while Mr McGregor was not present.
McGregor, pictured with his partner Dee Devlin at the High Court in Dublin in November 2024, faced an accusation that he ‘brutally raped and battered’ Nikita Hand (not pictured)
Nikita Hand speaking to the media outside the court upon hearing the verdict in her civil case, on November 22, 2024
Nikita Hand alleged that McGregor sexually assaulted her on December 9, 2018, and that another man, James Lawrence, did the same, Ireland’s high court heard over two weeks of evidence.
Ms Hand lost her lawsuit against Conor McGregor’s friend, Mr Lawrence. The jury of eight women and four men found Mr McGregor liable of assaulting Ms Hand.
Ms Hand said that she and a friend made contact with McGregor, who she knew, after a work Christmas party.
She said they were driven by McGregor to a party in a penthouse room of a south Dublin hotel where drugs and alcohol were consumed.
She said McGregor took her a bedroom in the penthouse and sexually assaulted her.
In civil cases, a defendant is found liable or not liable.
