Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Roy Williams responds to reporters' questions at the Cowboys NFL training facility in Irving, Texas in this Oct. 15, 2008, file photo.AP / Tony Gutierrez
Call it a case of mail-order ring gone wrong.
Dallas Cowboys football player Roy Williams Jr. filed a lawsuit against ex-girlfriend Brooke Daniels, a former Miss Texas USA winner, after she did not give back the $76,600 engagement ring he sent to her over mail, reports the Odessa American.
Just before Valentine's Day, Mr. Williams sent Ms. Daniels a package containing $5,000 for school and dental bills, a baseball for her brother - and a surprise. Opting to eschew the traditional down-on-bended-knee route, Mr. Williams also sent his lady love a recorded marriage proposal and the ring.
Unfortunately for him, Ms. Daniels kept the ring, but rejected the proposal.
On June 30, the football player filed an affidavit stating that Ms. Daniels refused to return the ring even after he " kept persisting that [it]be returned."
Mr. Williams is not the first person to file such a lawsuit. In Curtis v. Anderson, a Texas court established that engagement rings fall under the "conditional-gift rule," which requires that "the ring be returned to the donor if the donee is at fault in terminating the engagement." In other words, if the woman ends the engagement she is legally responsible to return the ring, gift or not.
But that didn't affect Ms. Daniels's decision to keep the ring. In fact, six weeks after the proposal-gone-awry, Ms. Daniels told Mr. Williams she had lost the ring, according to a statement he made in the affidavit. But an investigation later revealed this to be false, and that Michael Daniels, Ms. Daniels' father, was actually in possession of the ring.
Michael Daniels told the Odessa American Wednesday that he intended to return the ring to avoid a lawsuit, adding that Mr. Williams initially told Ms. Daniels that she could keep it.
"He said [to Ms. Daniels] 'I'm not like a lot of people; I don't want the ring back. You'll eventually come back to me,' and she didn't," Mr. Daniels said.
Luckily for Mr. Williams, the ring was eventually returned to him on Wednesday, reports TMZ.com, an entertainment news website.
Tell us: Do you think Brooke Daniels should have kept the ring? Or did she make the right decision to give it back?