FORMER FOUR-DIVISION WORLD champion Adrien Broner has been ordered to pay a woman close to $830,000 in connection with a 2018 sexual assault in a Cleveland nightclub.
In what was a civil lawsuit for damages, Common Pleas Court Judge Nancy Margaret Russo awarded the woman $500,000 in punitive damages and $250,000 in compensatory damages. Broner also was ordered to pay legal fees and other costs, bringing the total to nearly $830,000.
The Chandra Law Firm, which represented the plaintiff, said Broner did not contest the lawsuit. The 30-year-old also did not appear at Tuesday’s hearing.
“One would hope this judgment will teach Adrien Broner to keep his hands to himself,” said the woman’s lawyer, Ashlie Case Sletvold, in a statement released by the firm.
Broner, a former protégé of Floyd Mayweather’s who has courted controversy throughout his boxing career, was arrested and charged with gross sexual imposition and misdemeanour sexual imposition and abduction in connection with a June 2018 incident at the nightclub in Cleveland’s Warehouse District.
The woman and her friend informed police that Broner came “out of nowhere,” laid on top of her and started forcibly kissing her. Once Broner got off of her, she and her friend left the club and filed a police report.
