Former MMA fighter Conor McGregor is suing Sky News for defamation for calling him a rapist after Nikita Hand won her civil action against him last year.
A jury at the High Court found that Mr McGregor assaulted Ms Hand by raping her in a hotel room in Dublin in December 2018 and awarded her almost €250,000 in damages.
The Court of Appeal rejected Mr McGregor's appeal against the finding, in its entirety and ordered him to pay the costs of the case, believed to be around €1.5 million.
Mr McGregor’s lawyers asked the High Court for permission to serve legal papers on Sky News in the UK, for an alleged defamation which he claims happened in the immediate aftermath of the trial.
The action has been initiated just two days before the legal time limit to take the case runs out.
Mr McGregor’s Senior Counsel, Paul O’Higgins told the court that on 22 November last year, there was an "encounter" between Mr McGregor and Sky News outside the court.
According to Mr McGregor, this involved a reporter allegedly calling out to him "through a media scrum that he was a rapist".
Mr O’Higgins said the alleged words amounted to a defamation of his client as Mr McGregor had been found by the jury to be "civilly liable" for the assault.
In an affidavit, Mr McGregor said the Sky News reporter called out to him: "Excuse me, Mr McGregor, you are a rapist, have you any reaction or apology to the woman at the centre of this?"
Mr O’Higgins said the reporter's words were broadcast by Sky on 22 November 2024, could be found online and amounted to defamation that occurred in this jurisdiction.
Mr O'Higgins said that he was before the court because the time limit for bringing a defamation case is one year which, he said, would expire this Saturday, 22 November 2025.
He added it was only in exceptional circumstances that this could be extended.
Mr O'Higgins said that because two of the intended defendants were outside the jurisdiction, High Court permission was needed so that those two plenary summonses could be issued to begin proceedings.
Ms Justice Mary Rose Gearty said she would grant the application for the service of the documents and was told they would be issued by tomorrow.
One of the grounds raised and rejected in Mr McGregor’s appeal of the High Court jury’s finding was that the jury was asked only if Mr McGregor "assaulted" Ms Hand, that the question did not specify sexual assault and that the jurors may have been confused by what they were deciding.
This was rejected by the Court of Appeal which found that there "could be no doubt on the part of any member of the jury that the question they were answering ... was whether or not Mr McGregor assaulted Ms Hand by raping her."
The court said the judge could not have been any clearer in explaining this.
The Court of Appeal found the judge made it quite clear that even though the question for the jury referred to assault, the case was about "whether or not Mr McGregor raped Ms Hand".
The ruling also stated that the suggestion by Mr McGregor’s side that despite the constant references by the judge to the claim that he raped Ms Hand, the jury assessed damages on the basis that the assault was not a sexual one, was "fanciful".
It said given the judge’s repeated reference to the assault on Ms Hand being "nothing other than the alleged rape of Ms Hand", no member of the jury could have been in any doubt about what the question meant.
Mr McGregor is awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court as to whether or not it will hear a further appeal from him.
