Claim Oilers owner Katz paid teenager for sexual favours dropped: report
A claim that Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz paid a teenage ballet student $75,000 in exchange for sexual favours has been withdrawn because the student was reportedly not a minor during the alleged interaction, according to Sportsnet.
Sportsnet was able to verify the driver’s licence of the student, Sage Nicole Humphries, indicating she was 18 at the time of the allegation with Katz.
Katz, who would have been 53 at the time, denied any wrongdoing.
“I want to personally apologize for any harm the erroneous factual claims may have caused to Mr. Katz and his family,” Marc Randazza, the attorney representing Mitchell Taylor Button and Dusty Button, who are defendants in a sexual assault lawsuit brought forward by Humphries, wrote in an email to Sportsnet.
“We brought the claims in good faith, but the moment I doubted the ability to maintain them, I took corrective action and asked the court to strike all relevant references from the record.
“Nobody should repeat those allegations in any context without noting that they have been withdrawn and repudiated.”
The civil suit filed in the US was brought about after a sexual abuse lawsuit was launched by seven aspiring ballerinas in 2021, according to a CBC News report.
In that filing, the Buttons, a husband and wife involved in ballet, admitted to having had a “throuple sexual relationship” with Humphries — the lead plaintiff — who was 18 at the time. Details included in the documents allege that before that relationship, Humphries had prior sexual relationships with older men — including Katz — when she was underage.
A lawyer for Katz denied the allegations, telling CBC News that Katz never had a sexual relationship with Humphries.
Robert Klieger, Katz’s lawyer, did tell CBC News that the pair met twice in 2016 to talk about a film project the then-17-year-old was pitching to Katz’s film company, Silver Pictures.
Katz, who purchased the Oilers in 2008, has a net worth of $4.4B, according to Forbes.
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