A Dublin High Court jury found Conor McGregor liable in November 2024 for assaulting Nikita Hand at a hotel in December 2018 and awarded her €248,603.60 in damages, and the Conor McGregor and Nikita Hand lawsuit became final on December 4, 2025, when the Supreme Court of Ireland refused to hear his appeal. McGregor was also ordered to pay Hand’s legal costs, estimated at more than €1 million.1
Why the Case Was Civil, Not Criminal
Hand alleged that on December 9, 2018, McGregor sexually assaulted her in a penthouse suite at the Beacon Hotel in south Dublin after a Christmas party. She testified that he forced her onto a bed, choked her three times, and raped her. A paramedic who treated her described her as “very bruised,” with injuries to her chin, neck, chest, legs, buttocks, and thighs.
Hand reported the incident to An Garda Síochána the next day and gave a formal statement in January 2019. Investigators found her account credible and recommended a rape charge, but the Director of Public Prosecutions declined to prosecute in June 2020, citing insufficient evidence to secure a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. The DPP reaffirmed that decision twice more in 2020.
That closed the criminal route but opened the civil one. Under Irish law, a person alleging sexual assault can sue in civil court, where the standard of proof is the balance of probabilities rather than beyond reasonable doubt. A civil claim cannot proceed while a criminal prosecution is pending, so the DPP’s decision cleared the way for Hand to sue.
Hand named two defendants: McGregor and his longtime friend James Lawrence, who was also at the hotel that night. Lawrence acknowledged sexual contact with Hand but said it was consensual. McGregor denied the allegations entirely, and his senior counsel, Remy Farrell SC, called Hand’s account a “web of lies” and suggested the suit was an attempt at extortion. Hand was represented by Ray Boland SC and John Gordon SC.
The High Court Verdict
The trial ran before a twelve-person jury and Mr. Justice Alexander Owens. Two rulings mattered most.
The judge allowed evidence about McGregor’s Garda interview, in which he submitted a prepared written statement and then answered “no comment” to roughly one hundred questions. Justice Owens told the jury repeatedly that McGregor was “perfectly entitled” to remain silent and that they should draw no adverse inference from it.
The issue sheet the jury worked from used the word “assault” rather than “sexual assault.” McGregor’s team argued this blurred the line between battery and sexual assault. Justice Owens overruled the objection, and the defense accepted the ruling at trial. He also told jurors to stick to concrete evidence such as CCTV footage and text messages rather than playing detective.
In November 2024, the jury found McGregor liable for assaulting Hand and awarded her €248,603.60, made up of €188,603.60 in compensatory damages plus an additional €60,000. The same jury found Lawrence had not assaulted her.
The Costs Order
On December 5, 2024, Justice Owens ruled that McGregor must pay Hand’s legal costs, including discovery, on a “party and party” basis, the standard formula in Irish litigation under which the losing side covers the winner’s reasonable costs. He declined the more punitive “solicitor-client” basis, which is reserved for extraordinary cases. Estimates of Hand’s bill ranged from over €1 million to as much as €1.5 million.
The judge made no costs order in favor of Lawrence, despite the jury finding for him. He observed that McGregor had paid Lawrence’s legal fees throughout and that the two defendants had run their case “in lock step,” which made it inappropriate to add Lawrence’s costs to Hand’s bill.
The Appeals
Court of Appeal
McGregor took the verdict to the Court of Appeal, where Justices Isobel Kennedy, Brian O’Moore, and Patrick MacGrath heard the case. On July 31, 2025, the court dismissed every ground.
McGregor argued the jury had been confused by the “assault” wording on the issue sheet. Justice O’Moore called it “unreal” to suggest any confusion, pointing out that the trial judge had framed the allegation in a “brutally clear” way and told jurors repeatedly that the central claim was rape. McGregor also argued that the “no comment” cross-examination should not have been permitted. The Court of Appeal agreed that admitting it was “incorrect and was not justifiable,” but held that McGregor had not shown any “real risk of an unfair trial” given the trial judge’s repeated warnings to the jury.
Supreme Court
McGregor then sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. On December 4, 2025, a three-judge panel refused to hear the case. It again acknowledged that the “no comment” cross-examination should not have been allowed, but concluded that McGregor had nonetheless “received a fair trial” and that there was no basis to intervene “in the interests of justice.” The court also dismissed a related appeal by Lawrence, who had challenged the refusal to award him his costs. With that ruling, the judgment was final.
The Withdrawn “New Evidence” and Perjury Referral
During the appeal, McGregor tried to introduce what he called new evidence from Samantha O’Reilly and Steven Cummins, former neighbors of Hand, who claimed her bruising may have come from her then-boyfriend rather than McGregor. His lawyers withdrew the application before it was heard.
The Court of Appeal treated the withdrawal as an acknowledgment that Hand’s testimony was accurate and awarded her costs on the highest available basis for the applications tied to that evidence. The court then referred the matter to the DPP over allegations of perjury and subornation of perjury connected to the O’Reilly and Cummins statements. According to the Irish Times, a decision on whether to prosecute was expected later in 2025. Any charge would be only the second brought under Ireland’s 2021 perjury law.
The Follow-On Lawsuits
The judgment produced further litigation on several sides.
Hand’s solicitors filed new proceedings against McGregor, O’Reilly, and Cummins, alleging that all three “engaged in malicious abuse of court processes” over the attempted introduction of the disputed evidence.
Lawrence filed his own High Court claim against Hand in September 2025. Represented by Mulholland Law, he described the original suit against him as “frivolous,” “highly improper,” and “vexatious,” and said it caused him years of media scrutiny and significant financial harm.
McGregor brought defamation actions against news outlets over their coverage of the verdict. In November 2025, he sued Sky News over a reporter’s on-camera remark calling him “a rapist” outside the courthouse, his lawyers arguing that the civil jury had found him liable for assault, not convicted him of rape. In December 2025, he obtained High Court permission to serve a separate defamation claim on the publishers of the Irish Sun over similar reporting. Both actions were at early stages.
Commercial and Career Fallout
Within a week of the November 2024 verdict, hundreds of supermarkets across the UK and Ireland, including Tesco and the Musgrave group, pulled Proper No. Twelve Irish whiskey from shelves. Proximo Spirits, which acquired the brand McGregor co-founded in 2018, said it would stop using his name and likeness in marketing, took the brand’s website offline, and removed his image from its social channels.
Video game developer IO Interactive ended a partnership that had used McGregor’s voice and likeness in its Hitman series. Dublin’s National Wax Museum removed his figure. Murals of the fighter around Ireland were painted over.
The UFC was quieter. CEO Dana White waited fifteen days before addressing the verdict, telling reporters: “If I had a comment, I would’ve put it out already.” He noted McGregor had not fought since July 2021 and floated a possible return in the “later part” of 2025, which did not happen. The organization did not formally cut ties.
In September 2025, McGregor withdrew from a bid to run for the Irish presidency, pulling out hours before he was due to address local councils to seek the nominations needed for the ballot. Most Irish politicians had already publicly declared him unfit for office, frequently pointing to the civil verdict. McGregor blamed a “straitjacket” of eligibility rules and said the decision followed “careful reflection” with his family.
Speaking outside the Four Courts after the Supreme Court’s December 2025 ruling, Hand said: “This appeal has retraumatised me over and over again, being forced to relive it.” She said she could “finally move on and try to heal.”