DALLAS—It's been almost exactly two years since Three Expo Events, owner of the eXXXotica Lifestyle Expos, appealed the dismissal of its lawsuit against the city of Dallas to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals—but now, apparently worried about a likely potential loss at the federal appeals level, Dallas has signed off on a settlement of the case for a whopping $650,000.
The controversy started back in early 2016, when Jeffrey Handy, CEO of Three Expo, announced that the company would once again hold an eXXXotica Expo in Dallas, as it had the previous August, at the city-owned Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center—and almost immediately, religio-conservatives were up in arms about it. These included the Dallas Women's Foundation, which claimed that various exhibitors at the expo "contribute to the sex trade industry" and would be detrimental to the effort to stop human trafficking.
Also on board with the anti-eXXXotica campaign was Ray Lee Hunt, the billionaire oilman son of thrice-married oil millionaire/moralist H.L. Hunt, who owned more than 30 acres in downtown Dallas, including the Hyatt Regency hotel, Union Station, and the Reunion Tower, considered Dallas' tallest and most recognizable landmark. To say Hunt had a significant influence over Dallas politics would be an understatement. And then there's Hunt's wife, Nancy Ann, who chaired the organization New Friends New Life, which claims to "restore[] and empower[] formerly trafficked girls and sexually exploited women and their children"—and which wrote an "Open Letter to the Citizens of Dallas," wherein the group, besides also claiming the convention would violate the City's Adult Zoning Code, described eXXXotica as "arguably little more than a traveling strip club, adult book store, and promoter of the sex trade."
With all that monied opposition, the Dallas City Council flew into action. Having discussed the upcoming expo in an executive session earlier in the month, on February 10, the Council passed a resolution directing the Hutchison Convention Center "to not enter into a contract with Three Expo Events, LLC, for the lease of the Dallas Convention Center." What's particularly interesting about that is that during the council's executive session, it heard testimony from several witnesses, including the Dallas police chief, who testified that the previous eXXXotica expo had caused no problems whatsoever for law enforcement, and appeared to have violated no city codes or laws. Moreover, the city attorney stated that if eXXXotica couldn't use the convention center, it could locate elsewhere in the city, so what would be the point of banning it from the convention center?
Two days after the resolution passed, Three Expo sued the city—which (of course) hired conservative anti-adult attorney Scott Bergthold to defend it, a move that, with other expenses, was costing the city $4,000 per day to fight the lawsuit.
The suit spent more than a year moving through the courts, with a motion by Three Expo for a temporary injunction against the resolution having been denied, and a federal judge having dismissed the case in May of 2017 on the flimsy basis that while Three Expo Events was the plaintiff in the lawsuit, the entity that contracted with the convention center was "eXXXotica Dallas," so the judge ruled that Three Expo had no standing to sue, despite the two companies being closely affiliated. However, in late October of 2018, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the suit, noting that it didn't matter which entity had sued Dallas, since the city council’s intention was not simply to ban porn conventions put on by just one company, but one put on by any company.
"No reasonable factfinder can read the record of the events leading up to and during the City Council meeting without finding that the mayor and City Council firmly intended to make certain that the Exxxotica convention would not be staged by anyone in the Convention Center in 2016," Judge James Dennis wrote in the appeals court's opinion. "Thus, a realistic sense of the purpose and effect of the resolution in this context was that Three Expo, the undisputed promoter and proposed presenter of Exxxotica 2016, was banned from presenting Exxxotica 2016 at the Dallas Convention Center under any guise or circumstance."
And so it was that on June 12, the Dallas City Council, in order to put a final end to this ongoing and incredibly expensive lawsuit, approved without debate a $650,000 settlement to the suit.
"The $650,000 comes from the city’s risk management fund and is meant to pay Three Expo, its attorney Roger Albright and anyone else with an interest in the case, said the city’s settlement resolution," wrote Angela Morris of the Texas Lawyer website.
“It is in the best interest of the city to settle this lawsuit,” said the resolution.
What remains unclear is whether Three Expo is now free to hold another eXXXotica in Dallas in the future, since nothing in the settlement appears to have undercut the resolution that originally banned it from the convention center—nor is it clear whether Three Expo even wants to try for another eXXXotica in Dallas.
Attempts to reach Three Expo's attorneys, J. Michael Murray and Roger Albright, for comment were unsuccessful.
UPDATE: Murray got back to AVN this afternoon, and said, "As far as we're concerned, this is a great victory for the First Amendment and for freedom of speech, so we're very please with the outcome."
He also stated that Three Expo has no plans to attempt to hold an eXXXotica Expo in Dallas in the foreseeable future.
