Lawsuit dismissed against Blackhawks by alleged Michigan sexual-assault victim

One week after the Blackhawks reached a settlement with Kyle Beach, a second lawsuit related to the team’s sexual assault scandal was also dismissed.

The negligence lawsuit had been filed by “John Doe 2,” a man whom former Hawks video coach Brad Aldrich allegedly sexually assaulted in Michigan in 2013.

Alongside the more prominent lawsuit filed by Beach, the former Hawks player who alleged that Aldrich assaulted him during the 2010 playoffs and that team executives at the time covered up the incident, the Doe 2 lawsuit was an integral part of the legal battle against the Hawks over the course of 2021 that brought the scandal into the public eye.

But the lawsuit was dismissed Dec. 22 by Doe 2’s lawyer, Susan Loggans, per court records.

It is unclear if the lawsuit was dismissed as a result of a settlement. Although settlement talks had been reportedly scheduled between Loggans and Hawks lawyers for Dec. 20, both sides declined comment to the Sun-Times regarding the matter Monday. That response differed greatly to the paragraph-long statement the two sides jointly released after settling Beach’s lawsuit Dec. 15.

The Hawks had fiercely battled Doe 2’s lawsuit in motions to dismiss throughout the summer, pushing back against a never-substantiated claim they’d written a reference letter to Houghton (Michigan) High School that helped Aldrich get hired as a volunteer coach there.

Doe 2 was a 16-year-old student and hockey player for the school at the time. Aldrich was found guilty of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct for the incident and sentenced in 2014 to nine months in jail.