A High Court judge continues to charge a jury before sending them on to consider a verdict on a woman’s civil action for assault damages arising from Conor McGregor’s alleged rape in a Dublin hotel.

The eight women and four men will also decide Nikita Hand’s claim against James Lawrence, 35, of Rafter’s Road, Drimnagh, for allegedly assaulting her by allegedly having sex with her without her consent at the Beacon Hotel .

Both men deny the 35-year-old hair colourist’s claims and separately pleaded that they had consensual sex with Ms Hand at the hotel on December 9, 2018.

The jury heard that Ms Hand and a work colleague Danielle Kealey were driven to the hotel with Mr McGregor and Mr Lawrence in Mr McGregor’s car, arriving at 12.30pm on December 9. CCTV showed Mr McGregor leaving with Ms Kealey at around 6.15pm and Ms Hand leaving with Mr Lawrence at around 10.30pm.

Ms. Hand and Ms. Kealey testified that they had been out all night from the evening of Saturday, December 8, into the morning of December 9, and had consumed alcohol and cocaine. Mr McGregor and Mr Lawrence were partying separately in Dublin nightclubs and consuming alcohol. Mr McGregor said there was also cocaine. Mr Lawrence said he had never used cocaine.

Ms Hand claims she was raped by Mr McGregor, who “wouldn’t take no for an answer”. She said she did not remember having sex with Mr Lawrence later.

Mr McGregor denied rape and said he and Ms Hand had “fully consensual”, “vigorous”, “athletic” sex without the use of condoms. He said he was shocked when he later showed photographs of bruises on Ms Hand and said he had not caused her. Mr Lawrence said he had sex with Ms Hand twice using condoms and saw no marks on her other than a small bruise which he said he pointed out to her.

Mr Justice Alexander Owens continued his task before the jury today.

He told them they would be asked to answer yes or no to separate questions about whether Mr McGregor assaulted Ms Hand and whether Mr Lawrence assaulted Ms Hand.

If they answer in the affirmative in the case of one or both men, damages will be assessed in four categories: general damages for assault; special damages in the form of medical expenses; damages for past and future loss of earnings and aggravated damages.

The purpose of damages is compensatory, and damages are up to the jury, he said.

If they concluded that Ms Hand had been raped by Mr McGregor, she was entitled to more than nominal damages, he said. The more severely a person has been assaulted, the more substantial the damage.

Obviously, a rape is a very serious matter, rapes are “devastating” for victims, they have to live with them for the rest of their lives and rape trenches on their dignity and mental health, he said.

Even if a rape victim is not proven to suffer from PTSD, a jury could find that a victim will have to live with it for years to come, he added.

If they found that Ms Hand had been raped by Mr Lawrence, she was entitled to substantial damages against him even if she did not know it had happened, he said.

If they found in favor of Ms. Hand against any defendant, they would have to consider general damages, which are compensatory damages for the harmful impact of the rape. If found against Mr McGregor it would include a PTSD sum against him.

He said aggravated damages involve amounts awarded on grounds including the wrongdoer’s conduct, including their conduct in litigation, which shocks the claimant. Punitive or exemplary damages are on a different level, they mark the jury’s “special disapproval” of the defendants’ conduct. The jury could award a penalty if it believes, for example, that the witnesses conspired to make up a story, including claiming that a plaintiff is a gold digger. Punitive damages are “the exception rather than the rule.”

Compensation should be commensurate with the harm caused and caused, he said. The jury must act proportionately and fairly with respect to all categories of damages.

The Judicial Council’s personal injury guidelines do not apply to tort actions, he said. Awards are also not given in serious cases of defamation, he added.

He told the jury that if they got to the stage of awarding damages, they had to forget considerations such as Mr McGregor being a rich man and Mr Lawrence not.

If the jury finds that Mr. Lawrence assaulted Ms. Hand, the judge excluded them from assessing damages against him for Ms. Hand’s post-traumatic stress disorder.

In her evidence on any damages, mother-of-one Mrs Hand said she felt uneasy about continuing to live in Drimnagh after the alleged attacks. She bought a house in Drimnagh with her ex-partner before the alleged attacks but now lives elsewhere.

Ms Hand, who the jury heard was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in December 2020, also said the impact of the alleged assaults had left her unable to return to her work as a hair colourist. She had a part-time job for about ten months as a cleaner, the court heard.

The judge, who began his charge after 4pm on Tuesday, continued it today.

He told the jury that Ms Hand had been drinking and had also taken cocaine between December 8 and December 9. If they assumed he got up around 7am for work on December 8th, 2018, he was up “for 33 hours at a trot” by the early afternoon of Sunday, December 9th. She had consumed alcohol between 4pm and 5pm on December 8, had not eaten substantially since Saturday night until a burger at the hotel on Sunday night. From hotel lift CCTV, she was still in possession of a bottle of Bacardi and a glass, he said.

Ms Kealey was away for a similar period of time and Mr McGregor and Mr Lawrence were also at the party from Saturday night into Sunday, he said.

He said the jury could use their common sense when examining CCTV evidence of Ms Hand and Mr Lawrence in the hotel lift, including their “confused” pushing of buttons in the lift in their efforts to get it to the seventh floor.

The jury should consider all the evidence and decide which parts of it to accept and which to reject. They should consider whether a witness has “an ax to grind” or is holding something back or could be “more open”.

He said witnesses are “notoriously inaccurate” about the time “especially when they have a jar on them”.

Other “silent” witnesses, such as CCTV, may be considered more reliable, he said. The jury would have to go through that, examine who does what, if they seem drunk or amorous.

The jury was not bound by the lawyers’ interpretation of the evidence, he said.

“What you are concerned with here is not just truth and lies, but credibility and reliability,” he told the jury. Sometimes evidence can’t be relied on because it’s lies, sometimes because things are misremembered, he said.

The defense case is that Mrs Hand had to explain things to her boyfriend when she arrived home in the early hours of December 10 and made up a story that she had been raped, that her accounts after the alleged rape were inconsistent and that her whole the story was nonsense, he said.

Ms Hand’s case was that she was abused and “in pieces” when she revealed the rape to her manager, Eimear Brennan, late on the night of December 9/10, saying she was afraid and did not want to hurt her boyfriend by telling him this one. the truth.

Earlier, during his arraignment on Tuesday, the judge addressed the issue of consent to sexual activity.

Juries should be cautious about drawing conclusions about what they think a person who accuses of sexual assault should or shouldn’t have done, he said. A person undergoing a stressful event, such as rape, can respond to it in ways that might seem irrational, especially if “burdened with substance use,” he said.