In a civil lawsuit filed in federal court in Nevada, a couple had accused the millionaire owner of the Edmonton Oilers of paying an underage dancer $75,000 in exchange for sexual favours.
Not the purported victim, Sage Humphries, who refuted the allegations through an attorney, but dancing instructor Mitchell Taylor Button and his wife Dusty Button, launched the allegations against NHL team owner Daryl Katz.
Humphries and six other ballerinas accused the Buttons of sexually abusing them, and on August 3 the billionaire’s attorneys withdrew their third-party suit after presenting evidence that the allegations were untrue.
“Mr. Katz’s counsel provided the Buttons with credible evidence that key allegations were not true, and these sources were all wrong,” the couple’s lawyer, Marc Randazza, told The Post in a statement Monday. “Nobody should repeat those allegations in any context without noting that they have been withdrawn and repudiated.”
The now-disclaimed counterclaim was initiated in response to a 2021 lawsuit brought by Humphries and other ballet dancers against the Buttons, who were accused of sexually abusing the couple.
In July, The Buttons testified in court that they had a “throuple sexual relationship” with Humphries when she was 18 years old. However, they also claimed that Katz had sex with the dancer when she was younger, referring to her as a “child prostitute.”
Robert Klieger, Katz’s attorney, immediately refuted the accusations against his client, labelling them as “baseless and scurrilous.”
A meeting between Humphries and the owner of the hockey team was reportedly held in 2016 to discuss a project the teen was submitting to the owner’s production firm, Silver Pictures.
Humphries’ lawyer told NBC News in July that “Sage had a business relationship with Mr. Katz and there was never any sexual relationship between them.”
