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Couple Withdraws Claims NHL Team Owner Paid Teen for Sex

Their lawyer apologized for making the allegations in legal papers.

Editor’s note: Mitchell and Dusty Button withdrew the below allegations against Daryl Katz on Aug. 3, and their attorney apologized “for any harm the erroneous factual claims may have caused to Mr. Katz and his family.” Previously, this story was updated to add a denial from Sage Humphries and correct her age at the time of the payment from Katz.

A civil lawsuit claims the billionaire owner of the Edmonton Oilers paid a teenage ballet dancer tens of thousands of dollars for sex. The allegations against Daryl Katz emerged as part of a third-party counterclaim filed in the U.S. District Court in Nevada in response to a separate sexual-abuse suit filed against dance teacher Mitchell Taylor Button and his wife, Dusty Button, who was once a principal member of the Boston Ballet. The new filing claims the Buttons were in a consensual “throuple sexual relationship” with lead plaintiff Sage Humphries when she was 18, and that Humphries had sexual encounters with other men—including Katz. The suit claimed she was underage, but she and Katz say she was 18 at the time he made a $75,000 payment as part of a legitimate business deal. Katz’s lawyer said the allegations in the suit were “baseless and scurrilous.” An attorney for Humphries said in a statement: “Sage had a business relationship with Mr. Katz and there was never any sexual relationship between them.”