What documents from Football Leaks were used in the Mayorga civil case and how did courts treat them?

1. The leaked corpus: what Football Leaks reportedly contained

Reporting shows the Football Leaks cache included emails and internal reports produced by Ronaldo’s lawyers, mediator communications related to the 2010 settlement, a redacted confidentiality agreement, and at least one internal “confidential” document that Der Spiegel said could be read as an account of Ronaldo admitting non‑consensual sex; Der Spiegel and other outlets said those materials came from the Football Leaks trove ^{[1] [2] [6]}.

2. How Mayorga’s team used the leaks in litigation

Mayorga’s counsel sought and obtained files linked to the Der Spiegel story and used those documents as the factual spine of a 2018 civil complaint, pressing that the 2010 settlement and secrecy should be voided and that the leaked communications showed key facts about the encounter and the parties’ dealings ^{[7] [1] [4]}.

3. The courts’ factual and legal framing of the Football Leaks materials

Magistrate Judge Daniel Albregts and later U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey concluded that the documents were privileged attorney‑client communications and work product that had been “purloined,” and that Mayorga’s attorney procured and continued to use them in bad faith — a conclusion the district court said made fair adjudication impossible because the record could not be disentangled from the leaks ^{[3] [7] [8]}.

4. Remedies: dismissal, sanctions, and contested authenticity

Dorsey terminated the case as a sanction for counsel’s misconduct and ordered payment of substantial portions of Ronaldo’s fees against Mayorga’s lawyer, finding that disqualification alone would not cure the prejudice caused by reliance on the leaks; courts repeatedly emphasized the privileged nature of the materials and questioned their provenance and authenticity when raised by Ronaldo’s team ^{[7] [9] [8]}.

5. Appellate review and arguments about waiver and public interest

On appeal, Mayorga’s lawyers argued the confidentiality pact had been breached when Der Spiegel published Football Leaks documents in 2017 and therefore the NDA and privilege were effectively vitiated; appellate panels put skeptical questions to counsel but, as of the reported hearings, the 9th Circuit emphasized the district court’s finding that Ronaldo had not waived privilege and that his lawyers had taken cybersecurity steps — leaving the lower court’s sanctions and dismissal intact for review ^{[5] [10] [11]}.

6. Competing narratives, motives and limits of available reporting

Der Spiegel presented the leaks as exposé material and framed one internal paper as tantamount to an admission ^[1], while Ronaldo’s lawyers and U.S. judges have repeatedly called the same records privileged, potentially inauthentic or illegally obtained and therefore inadmissible — a clash that reveals both the journalistic impulse to publish troves and the legal system’s protective reflex for privileged communications; reporting also shows the courts declined to allow a full public in‑camera unsealing on several contested points and at times left crime‑fraud exception questions to arbitration ^{[12] [6]}.

7. Bottom line for what was used and how courts treated it

In short, Football Leaks supplied emails, attorney reports, mediator and settlement documents that Der Spiegel publicized and that Mayorga’s counsel incorporated into the civil suit, and U.S. courts treated those materials as misappropriated privileged materials that prejudiced the litigation — leading to dismissal of the case and sanctions against counsel, with appellate scrutiny largely deferring to the district court’s privilege and bad‑faith findings while acknowledging factual disputes about authenticity and waiver ^{[1] [3] [7] [5]}.