The Dallas’ Cowboys first press conference of training camp was postponed because team owner and general manager Jerry Jones was testifying 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 countersued, claiming her filing broke a contract signed by Davis’ mother on her behalf in 1998.
Davis’ lawsuit and her subsequent defamation lawsuit have both been dropped, although ESPN reports that her attorneys are considering an appeal. But before that can happen, a decision needs to be reached on Jones’ countersuit.
Jones has denied fathering Davis.
The Cowboys are returning to Oxnard, California for training camp, marking the 18th consecutive year that they’ve prepared for the season along the Pacific. Previously the team held training camp at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks from 1963 to 1989.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones testified at a Texarkana court room on 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 case in the matter, but the results of that test have not been revealed.
Davis’ attorney, Kris Hayes, called the ruling a ‘huge victory’, adding, ‘Alex is in a position where she really no longer has to hide her truth or live under the thumb of fear and maybe she’s going to finally get some peace and we hope other families will have that same benefit from the judge following the law.’
She alleges that she was conceived as the result of a relationship between Jones and her mother, Cynthia Davis, in the mid-1990s.
Court documents say that Jones and Cynthia Davis reached a settlement in which he agreed to support them financially as long as they didn’t publicly identify him as Alexandra’s father.
The suit filed by Alexandra on March 3, 2022, sought to have a court declare that she wasn’t bound by that agreement. Later, she dropped that suit – instead pursuing a way to legally prove that Jones is her father through testing.
A ruling by another judge previously compelled Jones to be subject to a genetic test, but Jones’ lawyers appealed. The ruling on February 19 is the result of that appeal.
During that hearing, three attorneys representing the Cowboys owner argued that a man who was married to Cynthia when Alexandra was born was her presumed father.
Davis’ attorneys said that wasn’t true, producing court documents from Arkansas stating in ‘plain and apparent words’ that the man who was married to Cynthia at the time wasn’t her father. Cynthia and that man have since separated.
Hayes argued that because Alexandra Davis doesn’t have a presumed father, Jones must either admit paternity or agree to a test.