by David P. Greisman
A $5 million lawsuit against Oscar De La Hoya by a woman who claims the fighter sexually assaulted her has been thrown out, according to the New York Daily News.
Instead, Angelica Marie Cecora will have to pay De La Hoya’s legal bills, and she and her lawyer have also been fined $500 each by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Paul Wooten.
The judge said Cecora’s claims were “completely without merit and were undertaken primarily to harass or maliciously injure” De La Hoya, according to the newspaper report.
Cecora’s civil lawsuit was for emotional distress, imprisonment, assault and battery, the article said. The woman said that she and De La Hoya were partying in March 2011, but that what had been consensual sex soon transitioned, and De La Hoya “yanked her out of bed three more times for more sex,” the article said.
She “was afraid to leave the hotel room because she feared that [De La Hoya] would attempt to have sex with her against her will,” the lawsuit said, according to the newspaper.
But the judge said the claims were unfounded.
“She never claims that he threatened her with force,” Wooten was quoted as saying. “Her claim that she was ‘afraid to leave the hotel room because she feared that the defendant would attempt to have sex with her again against her will’ is belied by her voluntary conduct from evening through the following morning.”
David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Follow David on Twitter at twitter.com/fightingwords2 or on Facebook at facebook.com/fightingwordsboxing, or send questions and comments to fightingwords1@gmail.com