A judge on Thursday ruled that Jerry Jones must take a paternity test to establish whether he is the biological father of a woman who sued the Dallas Cowboys owner to force genetic testing, court filings show.
Alexandra Davis, 26, filed a lawsuit in April that alleges she was conceived after her mother and Jones had a sexual relationship in Arkansas in the mid-1990s. Davis said in court documents that Jones and her mother later reached a settlement agreement that required Jones to financially support the women so long as they didn’t say he was Davis’ father. In court filings, Jones has denied that he fathered Davis, and his attorneys in May asked the judge to dismiss the case.
Davis’ lawyers filed a motion on Oct. 10 to subject Jones to genetic testing. Attorneys representing both parties were present for a hearing Tuesday morning in the 302nd District Court, and an associate judge granted the motion on Thursday.Court records show that Jones team filed an appeal on Friday.
The case is unlikely to be resolved until 2023. Andrew Bergman, one of Davis’ lawyers, said his client is thankful for the ruling but knows the lawsuit isn’t over.
“She understands this is another step,” Bergman told D Magazine Friday. “They’re going to keep fighting, but we keep winning.”
Jim Wilkinson, a personal spokesman for Jones, declined to comment.
Davis made waves in March after she filed a different petition against Jones and claimed he was her biological father.
The lawsuit made allegations public for the first time that Jones and her mother had agreed to payments in return for silence. The settlement included hundreds of thousands of dollars in lump-sum payments distributed over the course of Davis’ life, the lawsuit alleged. Jones’ lawyers later said that millions have since been paid out to Davis and her mother. Jones’ lawyers also claimed that Davis tried to extort money from Jones, which her lawyers denied.
In the March petition, Davis asked a judge to declare that she wasn’t legally bound by the settlement and that she couldn’t be sued if she were to violate the agreement. The lawsuit was later dropped, which freed Davis to file the paternity suit.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Jones’ legal team argued that because Davis was born during her mother’s first marriage, her presumed father would be her mother’s first husband. In response, Davis’ attorneys cited a previous Arkansas court ruling that found that Davis had no presumed father. Kris Hayes, one of Davis’ lawyers, said Davis had a legal right to seek parentage as an adult once she turned 18.
But Jones’ lawyers said Davis, who was 25 when she filed the lawsuit, had been an adult for at least seven years before she decided to seek parentage. In that time, she accepted the money from the initial settlement and abided by the agreement that her mother and Jones had established when she was a baby, they argued. On that basis, Jones’ attorneys requested the judge deny the order for paternity testing.
It’s not clear why Davis first filed the March lawsuit and subsequent paternity suit, but Bergman told D Magazine the legal battle had been a lifelong struggle for her.
“Everybody deserves to have a father,” he said.
Under the original settlement between Jones and Davis’ mother, the plaintiff is scheduled to be paid another lump-sum deposit when she turns 28.
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