A jury is scheduled in less than two weeks to hear Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ lawsuit that a woman alleging he is her biological father and her mother breached a contract they entered more than 20 years ago.
Jury selection is set to begin July 19 with the trial to follow July 22 in the U.S. district court in Texarkana. District Judge Robert W. Schroeder III is presiding.
“It’s a case where the judge has given it very, very thorough and careful attention and we’re looking forward to trying the case not as much for the money, although there’s significant money involved, but rather to uphold the fact that when you make a deal and one side lives up to the deal as Mr. Jones did, the other side should too,” Jones’ attorney Chip Babcock told The Dallas Morning News on Monday. “Our view is that they didn’t live up to it and we did.”
Jay Gray, an attorney for the daughter, told The News on Monday that they deny the accusations.
Jones’ lawsuit against 27-year-old Alexandra Davis and her mother Cynthia Davis stems from a defamation lawsuit the younger Davis filed against billionaire Jones and three other defendants in March 2023 accusing them of executing a “false and purposeful character assassination attack” on her after she sued him to establish paternity a year earlier.
An attorney for Jones told The News in a statement at the time that the allegations were false and had no merit.
All defendants besides Jones were eventually dropped as Davis’ defamation lawsuit was partially dismissed in October, refiled in November then dismissed again in March.
After the March ruling, Davis’ attorneys Gray and Andrew Bergman said in a joint statement to The News that they were disappointed by the dismissal but intended to appeal.
The parties were realigned in April, making Jones the plaintiff and the Davises defendants since Jones’ countersuit against them was the sole remaining case in the series of lawsuits, according to court documents.
Before Davis’ attorneys can file their appeal, the judge or a jury must rule on the case.
Jones’ complaint says the women breached a contract when they publicly said he is her father and filed for paternity action. (A separate paternity case filed in March 2022 is ongoing in Dallas County, where a judge ruled in February that Jones would have to take a DNA test to prove whether he is Davis’ biological father and establish paternity. Jones has repeatedly denied he is Alexandra Davis’ father.)
In the complaint, Jones says he — as the putative father — and the Davises reached a settlement agreement in 1998 preventing them from “suing or supporting any suit to establish paternity” and to keep the settlement details confidential in exchange for millions of dollars from the younger Davis’ “early childhood through adulthood.”
He said he abided by the agreement but the Davises “however, want more than they were entitled to receive” so they began “a campaign directed at and against Jones” by publicly disclosing the settlement’s existence and its terms to third parties.
“As the direct — and intended — result of their disclosures, articles discussing the settlement agreement and allegations about Jones’s private life flooded the internet,” the lawsuit says.
Davis previously said her mother had a romantic involvement with Jones in the mid-1990s, then her mother and Jones agreed when she was about a year old that he would support the Davises financially if they never publicly identified him as her father.
