(ThyBlackMan.com) Richard Dent is on a mission to clear his name in the energy sector.
Today, the former Chicago Bears’ Great and NFL Hall of Famer and his attorney Paul Neilan announced they are filing a petition with the Illinois Supreme Court to revisit their decision denying Dent the right to know the name of a woman who accused him of sexual misconduct and a man who accused him of public drunkenness.
On April 21, 2022, in Richard L. Dent vs. Constellation NewEnergy Inc., the state’s highest court voted 4-2, to deny Dent the right to obtain the names of persons who made these false and defamatory statements about him.
The Supreme Court case was argued last September, and the Supreme Court first announced it would hand down its decision in December. But the court pulled the decision at that time, only to render it seven months later.
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.
“Justice delayed is always justice denied, and we want the state’s highest court to give Mr. Dent justice,” said Dr. Charles Steele, Jr., president and CEO of the legendary civil rights organization co-founded and first led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Justice can only be served if Mr. Dent has the opportunity to present witnesses who can attest to the turn of events and his character. The court has refused to allow him the opportunity to present his witnesses. I find that odd for a man who has not been charged with a crime. It highlights that racism is alive and well and even impacts some of our most famous and high profiled citizens.”
Paul Neilan, Dent’s attorney, believes the delay is due to the influence of Exelon and its subsidiaries in the State of Illinois. “Instead of reading Dent’s 224 petition in the light most favorable to Dent and drawing inferences in his favor, as black letter Illinois law requires, the Supreme Court construes the facts stated in the petition in the light most favorable to Constellation and Exelon. The majority opinion concludes that it’s not possible for Dent to allege any set of facts that would make a prima facie defamation case, and yet in the next breath, the majority states facts that Dent could have stated to make that very case. That is palpably absurd, and nothing short of gross prejudice and willful blindness.”
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.
Although such alleged physical groping would be unlawful, no charges were ever filed by anyone against Dent. Further, during the time that Dent attended Constellation’s Shedd Aquarium event, he was always in the company of his guest, Sam Cunningham, then the Mayor of Waukegan. Mr. Cunningham has said that neither he nor Mr. Dent approached any woman, nor did any woman approach them, and he saw no such alleged groping of anybody by Dent. And although this alleged groping occurred on an open patio, in the sunny, broad daylight of a late afternoon, and in the presence and clear view of over 150 people, Constellation failed to produce so much as a single witness to this alleged groping. Instead, Constellation claimed that the unknown man at the JW Marriott – who was more than a mile away from the Shedd Aquarium – was a witness to Dent’s alleged groping of the unidentified woman.
Dent vehemently denied the allegations. He says he never spoke to or touched a woman at either of those events, and he said he has never been drunk.
In October 2018, Mark Huston, President of Constellation, notified Dent that it was terminating all of Dent’s contracts because of these allegations.
Then, in January 2019, this same Mark Huston proudly announced that Constellation had been selected as the official electricity and natural gas supplier to the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
“They gave Constellation the right to discovery, but they never gave me my right to discovery,” Dent said. “Constellation says they did an investigation, but they never even called Mayor Cunningham, even though Constellation invited him to the event, and they knew he was with me. They chose not to interview him. We arrived at the event at the same time, and we were together the whole time. I gave them the mayor’s number to reach out to him, but they never reached out to him.”
Regarding the 2016 Philadelphia event, Dent said that “as soon as I arrived, I was asked to accompany Exelon CEO Chris Crane and Exelon board members Anthony Anderson and Mark Young for dinner. I never made it past the lobby into the event because I was met by Chris Crane, who told me to turn around because I was being taken to dinner outside the premises. And we left immediately. The next day, I played golf with three other men. There were no ladies in our foursome. At no time was I talking to any woman alone or making any such comments. Chris Crane, those other Exelon executives, and my fellow golfers are all witnesses to what happened in 2016, but Constellation doesn’t want to talk about any of these facts.”
Neilan added, “The Illinois Supreme Court doesn’t want to hear about any of these facts either. Illinois defamation law is clear that a defamation plaintiff has to allege THAT the challenged statement is false. But now the high court has revolutionized Illinois defamation law to require a black defamation plaintiff to also allege WHY the statement is false. And we can do that, but the Illinois Supreme Court has railroaded Dent, dismissing his case with prejudice and denying him so much as a single opportunity to amend his complaint. In Cook County, on motion to dismiss, depriving a plaintiff of the right to amend his complaint is almost unheard of.”
“What happened in Dent’s case before the Supreme Court is as obvious as an oncoming CTA bus,” Neilan said. “Constellation viewed its contracts with RLD as an impediment to what they considered a bigger and better deal with the new NFL Hall of Fame Village in Ohio,” Neilan said. “But there had never been any disputes between RLD and Constellation during all the years they worked together. So, Constellation fabricated a false story about Dent. The persons who made these allegations exist only as figments in the imaginations of the Exelon and Constellation executives who thought up this scheme. And Exelon and Constellation wanted to make the story as embarrassing as possible to Dent, so they adopted an Emmett Till Strategy: they used the old racist, Confederate trope of a black man committing sexual improprieties against a white woman, and being drunk in public, all in the hope that Dent would be too embarrassed to make a public issue of these false allegations and that he’d go away without a fuss.”
But Dent isn’t going away. With the same tenacity he displayed on the gridiron, sacking famous quarterbacks, he is seeking his due process and justice.
“The Supreme Court bent over backwards to say that we cannot present facts to prove our claim when in fact we can, and the court’s own opinion recognizes that,” Dent said. “That is why two justices voted in our favor. The court has not allowed me my due process. I have a right to face my accuser. The court has not allowed me to do that, but I will continue to pursue justice until justice is served.”
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RLD Resources, LLC is a growing, wholly owned minority business specializing in energy services. Founded by Pro Football Hall of Famer and 1985 Super Bowl MVP Richard Dent, RLD Resources provides comprehensive energy and technology solutions to businesses and organizations of all sizes. In 2012, RLD partnered with Integrys to complete an electric supply aggregation deal with the City of Chicago that was the largest deal in the nation, which saved Chicagoans up to 14 percent (about $130) annually on their electric bills.
For additional information about RLD Resources LLC, to arrange an interview with Mr. Dent, contact Jerry Thomas at jerry@jerrythomaspr.com, or (312) 414-4016