The civil assault lawsuit against Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, which was filed more than four years ago, has been delayed again.
Jones, 82, is accused of ‘kissing a woman on the mouth and forcibly grabbing her without her consent’ on September 16, 2018 at the Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium.
The case, which was initially filed by a South Carolina woman in September 2020, was slated to go trial on March 3 but has now been pushed back to August 11, according to The Dallas Morning News.
It is the second time in a year that the trial date has been rescheduled. It had initially been set for March 18, 2024 before being delayed until March of this year.
Jones, who has been married to his wife Eugenia since 1963, previously submitted an affidavit stating that he would testify that he does not recall the alleged victim.
He denied sexually assaulting her and branded the allegations against him ‘categorically false.’
His attorneys requested a new trial date to be set at least six months out to allow more time for the pre-trial discovery phase. In a hearing last week, Dallas County District Court Judge Aiesha Redmond ruled that the trial would be delayed.
The case had been dismissed in 2022 after being filed two years earlier, only for a state appellate court to reverse that decision a year later.
When the lawsuit was first filed, Jones was quick to deny the accusations and branded them ‘malicious and hurtful’.
The case was originally against both Jones and the Dallas Cowboys, amid accusations that team officials ‘knew or should have known of’ the owner’s ‘misconduct’. Later, the NFL was added as a defendant in the case.
The woman accusing Jones of personal injury has said the alleged assault caused her to suffer ‘severe emotional distress’, ‘psychological pain and suffering’ and medical costs.
Jones has owned the Dallas Cowboys since 1989. He bought the franchise for $150million and is worth an estimated $13.6billion.
They have won the Super Bowl three times under his ownership – in 1993, 1994 and 1996.
Jones was also recently locked in a legal battle involving another woman. Alexandra Davis claimed to be Jones’s biological daughter.
However, the Cowboys owner managed to avoid a paternity test when the case came to an abrupt end last July.
Davis, who first filed a paternity lawsuit against Jones in 2022, agreed to dismiss her pending lawsuits against the Cowboys owner ‘with prejudice.’ Jones, meanwhile, dropped his countersuit against Davis, which had included a $1.6 million demand to cover attorney fees.
