The Dallas Cowboys’ first training camp press conference was postponed as team owner and general manager Jerry Jones testified in a legal battle with a 27-year-old woman who claims to be his biological child. ESPN reported Monday.
Alexandra Davis filed a paternity lawsuit against the billionaire in 2022. He has since filed a countersuit, alleging that her lawsuit violated a contract Davis’ mother signed on her behalf in 1998.
Davis’ lawsuit and her subsequent defamation case have both been dropped, though ESPN reports that her attorneys are considering an appeal. But before that can happen, a decision must be made on Jones’ countersuit.
Jones denies being Davis’ father.
The Cowboys return to Oxnard, California for training camp, preparing for the Pacific Northwest season for the 18th consecutive year. The team previously held training camp at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks from 1963 to 1989.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones testified in a Texarkana courtroom Monday
Alexandra Davis, 26, first sued Jones in 2022 to be recognized as his biological daughter
In February, Jones was ordered to take a paternity test, but the results of that test have not yet been released.
Davis’ attorney, Kris Hayes, called the ruling a “tremendous victory,” adding: “Alex is now in a position where she no longer has to hide her truth or suppress it out of fear. Perhaps she can finally have some peace, and we hope other families will have the same benefit of having a judge follow the law.”
She claims she was conceived through a relationship between Jones and her mother, Cynthia Davis, in the mid-1990s.
Court documents show that Jones and Cynthia Davis reached a settlement in which he agreed to support them financially, on the condition that they not publicly identify him as Alexandra’s father.
Alexandra filed a lawsuit on March 3, 2022, seeking a court declaration that she was not bound by that agreement. She later dropped that lawsuit, instead seeking a way to legally prove Jones is her father through testing.
A different judge’s ruling previously forced Jones to undergo genetic testing, but Jones’ attorneys appealed. The Feb. 19 ruling is the result of that appeal.
During the hearing, three attorneys for the Cowboys’ owner argued that a man who was married to Cynthia when Alexandra was born was likely her father.
Davis’ attorneys said that was not true, and produced court documents from Arkansas that stated in “plain and unambiguous terms” that the man Cynthia was married to at the time was not her father. Cynthia and that man have since separated.
Hayes argued that because Alexandra Davis likely has no father, Jones should either admit paternity or agree to testing.