Free-agent safety Shilo Sanders faces a trial later this summer on the question of whether his bankruptcy case will discharge an $11.89 million civil verdict against him.
All of it apparently could have been avoided.
John Darjean, who sued Shilo more than a decade ago for injuries inflicted during a 2015 altercation, recently told Brent Schrotenboer of USA Today that Darjean initially would have settled the case for far less than $11.89 million, if Shilo’s father, Deion, had handled the situation differently.
“I would have taken something,” Darjean said. “I was thinking Deion was man enough to say, ‘Hey, here’s $200,000. I know my son messed your neck up. You’re damaged.’”
Instead, Deion called Darjean a “real life grifter” in a 2016 interview with TMZ.
“Later on down the line, after he defamed my name, I wanted $100 million because I was that pissed off,” Darjean told Schrotenboer.
In the original lawsuit, Darjean claimed Shilo punched and elbowed Darjean in the neck at school, after he tried to confiscate Shilo’s phone. Shilo failed to respond to the lawsuit, resulting in a default judgment of nearly $12 million.
Shilo’s bankruptcy case will discharge the debt, unless it is found to have been a “willful and malicious injury.” That’s the issue for the trial scheduled to commence on August 31.
Darjean said that Shilo doesn’t want to settle. Darjean also has called Deion “arrogant.”
“He will cut his own damn head off before he loses,” Darjean said of Deion. “That’s the type of person he is.”
Even if the debt isn’t discharged, Darjean would still have to collect it. The process is slow and cumbersome. Still, the debt would become a burden that would follow Shilo around until it’s satisfied.
Wherever the money comes from, it likely won’t come from an NFL team. Although Shilo recently listed the Browns, Dolphins, and Cowboys as his preferred pro football destinations, he also said he’s no longer training for football.
“It takes a special kind of guy to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I don’t think there’s any light in my tunnel,” Shilo said.
The more immediate light is the moving train of a trial that could result in Shilo being stuck with the $11.89 million judgment that resulted from his failure to defend himself against Darjean’s allegations when Shilo had the chance.
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