The Illinois Supreme Court recently denied former Chicago Bear Richard Dent the chance to learn the names of the people who accused him of sexual harassment and drunken disorderly conduct in 2018, SW Iowa News reported.
The former Chicago Bear, Pro Football Hall of Famer and 1986 Super Bowl MVP had sought the identities of three employees of energy supplier Constellation NewEnergy Inc. in pretrial discovery in an effort to sue the individuals for defamation. (Dent had entered the energy field after retiring from football.)
However, in a four-to-two decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the accusers in this case have a "qualified privilege" to anonymity and overturned a ruling from the First District Court of Appeals.
According to a press release Windy City Times received, the case, Richard L. Dent vs. Constellation NewEnergy Inc., was actually argued last September but the decision was not rendered until late April 2022.
The release also said, "Dent and his company, RLD Resources LLC, had several energy supply, brokering and marketing contracts with Exelon's subsidiary Constellation NewEnergy. In the summer of 2018, Dent, the only NFL Hall of Famer in the electricity and natural gas industry, and one of the very few (if not the only) African American-owned firms licensed to sell electricity in both Illinois and across the nation, introduced Constellation to the leadership of the new NFL Hall of Fame Village in Canton, Ohio. Constellation wanted to be the official energy supplier to the new NFL Hall of Fame facility.
"After Dent made that introduction, though, Constellation executives purposefully excluded Dent from business meetings between Constellation and the NFL Hall of Fame. Dent no longer received any communications regarding this deal from Constellation or its new prospective NFL customer.
"Then, in October 2018, Constellation did communicate with Dent. The company notified him that Constellation was terminating all of its contracts with RLD because a white woman accused Dent of approaching her at a Constellation golf event in Philadelphia in 2016 and telling her that she had "a butt like a sister." Constellation also alleged that some man had accused Dent of being 'drunk and disorderly' at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Chicago in July 2018 and, barely moments later, physically groping the same unidentified woman from the 2016 Philadelphia event at a Constellation pre-golf party at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago."
Dent has vehemently denied all allegations.
The release also stated community and social justice organizations, such as the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), have come to Dent's defense, questioning why it has taken so long for the supreme court to render its decision.
