Sanz Denies Almost Everything, Including Whether He Knows 9/11 Happened

Earlier this afternoon Horatio Sanz submitted his response to Jane Doe's complaint, filed almost eight months ago. You can read it here. Broadly speaking, his replies to Doe's allegations take three forms: either he denies the truth of the allegation; he states that the allegation draws a legal conclusion that does not require a response; or he says he lacks the knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the allegation.

I am not a lawyer, and I will save any deeper analysis for a later, more informed report. I will just make a few observations right now.

1. Sanz denies paragraphs 79 and 80 of Doe's complaint, which allege that in 2019 he sent her text messages admitting to his conduct. Paragraph 80 of Doe's complaint quotes from these text messages at length. In his response, Sanz describes these as "purported text messages" that Doe "purports to quote" but did not attach to the complaint, stating that he lacks the knowledge or information to form a belief about their truthfulness. As a layman I'll hazard that this response might look bad in retrospect if Doe indeed still has records of these text messages. I will also hazard that she wouldn't have quoted them in the complaint if she didn't.
2. Sanz argues that claims made under the New York Child Victims Act deprive him of due process and that the CVA is unconstitutional. This argument has been made before, notably by a Nassau County diocese and by Prince Andrew's lawyers (one of whom is also Sanz's lawyer). It has yet to prevail.
3. Let's take a closer look at just one of the statements whose veracity Sanz is unable to assess. Here is paragraph 41 of his response:

Sanz lacks knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the allegations in paragraph 41 of the Complaint.

And here is paragraph 41 of the complaint:

On September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked by a group of organized terrorists killing nearly 3,000 people.

A credible response indeed.

Header image via YouTube/The Tonight Show.