Conor McGregor facing criminal investigation for possible perjury 

The Court of Appeal ended up playing host on Wednesday to a lot more drama than those observing had expected. After the goings on of Conor McGregor’s appeal hearing on Tuesday morning, what was to come on Wednesday was generally reckoned to be an afterthought.  Some of the media assembled on Tuesday wondered whether it would be worth attending. Most of them were back once again regardless. It was to prove the correct decision. Yet again, matters were overshadowed by those not present — former mixed martial artist and current businessman Conor McGregor and James Lawrence, the man who had been McGregor’s co-accused at the High Court trial last November, which saw the former garner a civil conviction and a €250,000 civil penalty for the assault of Nikita Hand.Nikita Hand sued Conor McGregor over an incident at a south Dublin hotel in December 2018. She was awarded almost €250,000 in damages. Picture: Niall Carson/PA In appealing that ruling, McGregor had sought to overturn a civil conviction.  The criminal investigation for possible perjury which could now be in the offing was unlikely to have been part of the plan, an eventuality lent a certain irony given that the DPP had declined to criminally prosecute McGregor for the assault of Ms Hand in the first place. The substance of the hearing on Wednesday would have been covered the previous evening if Mr Lawrence’s barrister, John Fitzgerald, had been available.  He had, however, double-booked himself in the mistaken belief that all day would be taken up with the "fresh evidence" to be introduced suggesting that Ms Hand had been assaulted by her former partner, not McGregor, in December 2018.Ruth Coppinger and Natasha O'Brien outside the Court of Appeal in Dublin. Picture: Niall Carson/PA In the end, the application to introduce that evidence, which was flagged widely in advance of the appeal and alleged that it was Ms Hand’s former boyfriend who had assaulted her, was withdrawn first thing on Tuesday, leading to a set of substantially-curtailed proceedings. Before Mr Fitzgerald could begin his argument as to why his client's costs from the assault trial should be paid by Ms Hand, her own barrister, John Gordon, stood up and told the court he wanted to address what had happened on Tuesday morning, when he had said in no uncertain terms that the sudden withdrawal of McGregor’s "fresh evidence" was a very serious matter. He was told by Justice Isobel Kennedy to bide his time — he would have a chance to talk about what he thought should happen at the end of proceedings.  Placated, he retook his seat, while the minds of the media in attendance raced collectively in speculation as to what was to come. Mr Fitzgerald then proceeded to outline his legal argument, which in essence was that since the trial jury had found Mr Lawrence not guilty of a charge of sexual assault, the judge presiding, Justice Alexander Owens, had had no jurisdiction to award costs against him. He argued further that since Ms Hand had made it clear during the initial trial that she did not believe she had had sexual relations with Mr Lawrence, and had only found out several months after the fact that Mr Lawrence had said this did indeed happen, “it begs the question as to how it made it into the pleadings”. Rebutting Mr Fitzgerald’s legal arguments, Ms Hand’s counsel, Ray Boland, suggested that justice had been done with the imposition of costs on Mr Lawrence, who he said had been in “lockstep” with McGregor from day one of the trial. He noted that the legal costs in question were highly material — €1.3m by his estimate — and in reality dwarfed the compensation awarded to Ms Hand for her ordeal, meaning that should the costs be instead awarded against her, they would likely completely negate what McGregor had been ordered to pay her in the first place, something Mr Boland described as “the grubby reality” of the proceedings. Mr Lawrence, he observed, had not paid any of his own extensive costs himself, the bill having been footed by his friend McGregor, and remained “in the same financial position as he was before” the November trial.Supporters of Nikita Hand outside the Court of Appeal. Picture: Niall Carson/PA Mr Boland added that McGregor had been evasive in answering who was paying Mr Lawrence’s legal bills during the trial, declining to give a yes or no answer directly under cross-examination at the time. Further, he said that in paying Mr Lawrence’s bills, McGregor had shown he was “prepared to pay over the odds” to recoup the damages owed to Ms Hand “via his avatar Mr Lawrence”. With those arguments out of the way, the court said it would retire to consider judgment on the appeals of both McGregor’s conviction and Mr Lawrence’s costs issue. But one thing that was to be settled on the day was Mr Gordon’s request that the withdrawal of the McGregor evidence be dealt with substantively. As he stood once more to address the court Justice Kennedy asked him what he wanted to happen. It was simple. “The court should refer this matter to the DPP. The court has the power to do that,” he said, noting that not only had his client’s reputation been undermined by the new evidence, but that by its withdrawal she had been denied her chance to take the stand to rebut it. “We do intend to refer it to the DPP,” Justice Kennedy finally concluded, adding yet another legal headache to McGregor’s growing collection. The court has reserved its judgment on the appeal to a later date.

View Original Article