Texas woman who says Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is her father sues him for defamation
A North Texas woman who claims Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is her father has now suing him for defamation.
ESPN reported the lawsuit on Monday.
The suit was filed in a Texarkana federal court.
Jones, in Phoenix this week for the NFL meetings, declined to comment.
WFAA, a media partner with the Star-Telegram, reported that Alexandra Davis, 26, alleges in the newly filed lawsuit that Jones, a longtime Arkansas friend and a Cowboys spokesman “initiated a deliberate plan” to portray the billionaire’s “own daughter ... as an ‘extortionist’ and a ‘shakedown artist’ whose motivation was money and greed.”
Davis filed her first lawsuit in March of 2022. That suit alleged Jones was her father and had paid her and her mother at least hundreds of thousands of dollars to conceal that secret, according to court documents.
The lawsuit filed on Monday in federal court, claims that in the weeks following the March 2022 lawsuit, Jones and his representatives embarked on a public campaign attacking her character, “based knowingly on false statements and accusations.”
“Not once did Defendant Jones or any of his agents ever deny that Plaintiff was Defendant Jones’ daughter,” Davis’ Dallas lawyers, Jay K. Gray and Andrew A. Bergman, wrote in the 22-page defamation complaint. “Instead, Defendant Jones chose the avenue of calling his own daughter an ‘extortionist’ merely to make his own public image less despicable by attempting to discredit Plaintiff’s reputation and character in the public eye.”
WFAA reported that a judge ordered Jerry Jones in 2022 to take a paternity test by Jan. 24 regarding the lawsuit filed by Davis. A Texas court of appeals delayed those paternal proceedings one day before that hearing was scheduled. The new deadline is May 29, according to Davis’ lawyers.
The lawsuit claims that Davis’ mother, Cynthia Spencer Davis, was courted by Jones in 1995 when she was working at the American Airlines ticket counter in Little Rock, Arkansas.
“Rather than acknowledging his child, or even taking the opportunity to get to know his child, my father and his associates have publicly smeared my reputation and intentions,” she told WFAA in the statement provided by her lawyers. “I have been falsely accused of a ‘shakedown’ and ‘extortion.’ In reality, I am a daughter who simply wants to acknowledge her father without fear of retribution. I will not stand by and let my father’s actions or words define me or my future.”
According to an ESPN report from last year, Andrew Bergman, one of Davis’ lawyers, allegedly told Levi G. McCathern II, one of Jones’ lawyers, in a meeting: “If you want this just to go away, it’s going to cost you Zeke [Ezekiel Elliott] or Dak [Prescott] money.”
Bergman has said he had never asked for a dollar to settle the case.
“This case was never about money — it was about a young woman searching for her dad. Their response was to try to destroy her,” said Bergman stated in a press release. “Instead of keeping the matter as private as possible, Mr. Jones — with his immense resources and public platform — chose to strategically and deliberately assassinate Ms. Davis’ character with wholly false allegations.”
This new lawsuit states Davis is seeking an unspecified amount in actual and punitive damages.
The Star-Telegram used content from WFAA, press releases and a ESPN report in this story.
