Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones to Face Suit Over Alleged Sex Assault

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones must face a lawsuit from a woman who alleges he kissed her on the mouth and forcibly grabbed her without her consent.

The case can continue because the woman, known only as J.G., made a good faith attempt to comply with a court order requiring her to amend her complaint to provide more information about her identity and the incident location, the Texas Court of Appeals, Fifth District said.

J.G. filed her original petition against Jones and the Dallas Cowboys Football Club in September 2020, using the pseudonym Jane Doe. The defendants complained of the lack of identification and failure to provide any details over where the incident occurred.

After a hearing on this issue, the court granted the defendants’ special exceptions to the complaint and ordered J.G. to file an amended complaint. In the new complaint she identified herself by her initials and said that the incident occurred Sept. 16, 2018, at AT&T Stadium.

Jones and the Dallas Cowboys filed a motion to dismiss the suit. They argued that her new petition didn’t provide enough details because she still didn’t identify herself and hasn’t made the effort to negotiate a protective order to mask her identity, and that the stadium is “expansive” so it’s just as vague as saying the alleged incident “occurred in a particular town.”

J.G.'s counsel provided her full name to the defendants’ lawyers by email. They also filed a new petition, where—although still identifying her by initials—she specified that the incident occurred in the Tom Landry room at AT&T Stadium. The trial court nevertheless granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss.

However, if a plaintiff makes a good faith attempt to amend a petition in response to special exceptions, the court can’t dismiss the suit, Justice Amanda L. Reichek wrote.

In this case, J.G. filed an amended complaint, which is enough to qualify as a “good faith attempt” in response to the court’s order, the court said.

The trial court’s order didn’t expressly say J.G. had to include certain information, and her second complaint corrected most of the alleged deficiencies, the court said.

“We are not persuaded that” J.G. “needed to specify where in the stadium the conduct occurred to meet the fair notice standard,” Reichek wrote.

Chief Justice Robert D. Burns and Ken Molberg were also part of the panel.

Cole, Cole, Easley & Sciba PC represented J.G. Jones and the Dallas Cowboys were represented by McCathern PLLC.

The case is J.G. v. Jones, Tex. App., 5th Dist., No. 05-22-00215-CV, 2/27/23.