Claims against Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz dropped from U.S. lawsuit

Allegations that Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz had a sexual relationship with an underage ballerina have been dropped from a U.S. civil suit. 

The voluntary motion of dismissal regarding the allegations against Katz was filed in U.S. District Court in Nevada last week. An accompanying motion to strike removes all references to the dancer, Sage Humphries, being "underage," "a minor," or "17 years old" as was previously alleged, when she met and exchanged texts with the billionaire in the spring of 2016. References to "statutory rape" and "sex trafficking" have also been struck from the third-party claim.

Both Katz and Humphries have denied that they ever had a sexual relationship. 

The withdrawn allegations were made by Mitchell Taylor Button, a dance teacher, and his wife, Dusty Button, once a principal member of the Boston Ballet, as part of the couple's defence against a sexual abuse lawsuit launched by seven aspiring ballerinas in 2021.

Their third-party claim, filed in July, described a consensual "throuple sexual relationship" with Humphries, the lead plaintiff in the abuse suit, while alleging that she had been involved in three prior sexual relationships as an underage teen with much older men, including Katz. It also claimed that Katz had paid the young dancer $75,000 for "her sexual favours."

The filing included screenshots of text messages, allegedly exchanged between Humphries and Katz, discussing payments of $25,000 and $50,000.

In the motion to strike, Marc Randazza, the lawyer for the Buttons, notes that "it is highly unusual for a party to move to strike portions of its own pleadings," but says that information provided to them now "calls into question" their prior claims about how old Humphries was