On Monday, Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott sued a woman who has accused him of sexual assault, along with her lawyers. On Tuesday, one of her lawyers responded.
In a 15-minute, on-the-record phone conversation with PFT, attorney Yoel Zehaie said that Victoria Shores will be suing Prescott “in the next few days.”
Zehaie acknowledged that the statute of limitations for sexual assault has expired (the alleged incident occurred on February 2017), “but there’s other causes of action that I don’t want to go too deep in detail about it, but that we do plan on filing soon. It’s imminent and you will see it soon. So, to answer your question, are there things that we can sue him for? Yes.”
Zehaie also was asked whether a criminal complaint has been made by Shores.
“I’ll answer the question by saying yes,” he said, “but we don’t want to go too much into that. But, yes, we are in the middle of that process.”
Zehaie said that Prescott and his lawyer, Levi McCathern, “kind of put us on the defensive when our client is the victim.”
“Yesterday, we were kind of blindsided when we saw they filed an extortion lawsuit, but we wanted to set the record straight that there was nothing extortionist about what happened,” Zehaie added. “We sent that demand letter and that is — there is nothing out of the ordinary in that. It’s standard practice in civil cases in the legal profession. But what we don’t want is them to have this narrative of ‘extortion’ because this is what they want, right? They wanted to make this — they wanted to preemptively strike so they can control the narrative. But there’s nothing extortionist about what occurred.”
He also addressed our position (as mentioned during PFT Live) that $100 million seems like a very high opening settlement demand.
“We stand very firmly behind that,” Zehaie said. “Now, do we believe that the case would have potentially settled for 100 million? No, but that’s also standard practice, you know, you send high numbers. And also, on a rape case — so there’s an old saying with wrongful death cases, you know, how do you value a dead body, right? And as to rape, it’s the same way to us, how do you put a value on a rape? There is the trauma and the damages that come from that are so infinitely high. There’s not a number that could ever make her whole. So, the $100 million is not, in our opinion, an outrageous number. Now, this is a very credible person. The facts of the story are very consistent with what she’s saying.”
Zahaie also said that, during conversations with Prescott’s counsel, the defense shifted from Prescott saying he didn’t know Shores to Prescott claiming that any contact was consensual.
“He kept changing his story,” Zahaie said. “First, he said he didn’t know her. . . . And now he’s saying it’s consensual. . . . His counsel at first said he didn’t know her. Then he said, well, he wants more information to remember.”
The lawsuit filed by Prescott seems to acknowledge that consensual contact occurred.
For now, the biggest news from the conversation is that, in a matter of days, Shores will file a counterclaim that includes causes of action arising from the alleged sexual assault, even though the statute of limitations applicable to the assault itself has expired.
