A unanimous Appellate Division, First Department, panel yesterday affirmed sanctions imposed against an attorney and his client for filing "frivolous" claims against former Olympic boxing gold medalist and welterweight champion Oscar De La Hoya. The attorney, Robert Evans Jr. of Evans & Al-Shabazz, represented Angelica Cecora, a woman who had a sexual encounter with De La Hoya at a hotel in 2011. Cecora alleged that after having sex with De La Hoya, he asked her to engage in unconventional acts while drugs were delivered to the room, and asked that Cecora’s roommate join them. She agreed, but after she had gone to bed, De La Hoya allegedly kept coming to her room and asking her to have sex again, making her afraid to leave the room. The suit included claims for battery, assault, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
In April 2012, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Paul Wooten sanctioned Cecora and Evans each $500 and ordered Cecora to pay De La Hoya’s legal fees. Wooten said the allegations in the complaint did not support the claims that Cecora was threatened or confined, and that she and Evans had filed and publicized the lawsuit to humiliate De La Hoya (NYLJ, April 6, 2012).
