The Shilo Sanders bankruptcy case hinges on two aspects of the 2015 incident

Colorado football defensive back Shilo Sanders has hired at least three lawyers in three different time zones to help him out of this mess – bankruptcy at age 24 and over $11 million in debt.

Court documents say it was a “nearly decade-long saga of the destruction of a young man’s life.” But now that the case is being hotly debated in court this summer, the dispute has essentially boiled down to a single incident nine years ago, when Shilo was just 15 years old:

Did Shilo Sanders cause permanent injuries to John Darjean, a security guard at his high school, in 2015?

Or did these injuries exist before, including those that led to Darjean’s previous spinal surgery in 2014?

That’s one of the biggest questions in a strange case involving a well-known college football player (Sanders) and a wealthy coach and father (Deion Sanders) who once denied allegations against his son as false, but which ultimately led to Shilo filing for bankruptcy last October.

The goal for Shilo Sanders is to have the $11 million debt forgiven in bankruptcy court rather than carrying it after he graduates from college. Whether the court allows that will depend on that incident and whether Sanders acted “willfully and maliciously” at the time when he was 15, his lawyers said in a court document.

“The only two narrow issues in this proceeding are (i) whether the ‘damage’ alleged by plaintiff (Darjean) resulted from the alleged assault at issue in the court; and (ii) whether (Darjean) has met his duty under … the Bankruptcy Code by proving that (Sanders) acted ‘willfully and maliciously’ with respect to that alleged damage,” Sanders’ attorney wrote in an April 24 court document.

What is at stake for Shilo Sanders?

The case has already reached a point where a bankruptcy trustee has requested access to Shilo’s home to take inventory of his belongings, including his jewelry, so that he can gather everything together and sell it to help him pay off his debts.

But if Sanders and his lawyers are successful, he could move on with relatively little damage to his bank account. In recent months, the case has become more contentious and could become much more expensive as it heads toward a possible mini-trial over the 2015 incident. Sanders owes most of that debt to Darjean, who is seeking to collect it and said Sanders is not entitled to relief under the law because the debt resulted from a “willful and malicious injury.”

“Typically, debts are dischargeable” in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, says Angela Littman, a bankruptcy expert and law professor at the University of Texas. But there are exceptions, and one of them is when the debt results from intentional and malicious conduct.

Is a mini-trial underway?

In this case, the debt stems from a personal injury lawsuit Darjean filed against Sanders in 2016, claiming he suffered permanent injuries after Sanders attacked him at his Dallas school in 2015.

The case finally went to trial in 2022, but Sanders failed to appear, leading the court to award Darjean a default judgment of $11.89 million, including $2 million for future medical expenses, $3 million for future physical impairments, and $2 million for loss of future earning capacity.

Darjean “will recover from defendant Shilo Sanders the total amount of $11,890,937.42,” according to the final judgment signed by a judge in May 2022.

Sanders still owes him money but now wants “a fresh start, free from the crushing burden of his debt that would otherwise affect his future,” his lawyers said in a court document. To do that, he is trying to raise questions about whether Darjean’s injury had another cause and to show that he did not act intentionally and maliciously, as defined by the law. Sanders did not appear to contest that in court in Dallas in 2022, but wants to do so now to pay off the debt.

“Because the facts of the alleged assault were not tried in state court, the bankruptcy court will essentially have to hold a sort of mini-trial to determine what happened,” Littman predicted. “And yes, the events of the alleged assault are relevant because if the bankruptcy court decides that Sanders’ role in it rises to the level of willful and malicious assault, then his debt to Darjean will not be discharged.”

What injuries did John Darjean have?

Darjean, now 48, is a former Dallas Baptist baseball player who was drafted in the sixth round by the New York Yankees in 1997. He never made the major leagues and was working at Shilo’s school in Dallas on Sept. 17, 2015, when he tried to confiscate Shilo’s phone at the request of Deion Sanders, Darjean’s complaint states. Deion Sanders wanted to prevent Shilo from speaking to his mother while an ugly dispute related to a divorce and custody case was underway, the complaint states.

According to Darjean, Shilo then “went crazy.” He “took his elbow and hit me as hard as he could, super hard, straight into my chest and upwards,” Darjean testified. “… He rammed it into my neck and then I fell backwards.”

As a result, Darjean said he was hospitalized and underwent spinal surgery five days later at age 39. His bankruptcy lawsuit says he suffered severe and permanent injuries, “including a broken neck, damage to the cervical spine, permanent neurological damage and irreversible incontinence.”

However, Sanders’ lawyers have denied this, describing Darjean as an “aggressor seeking to exploit Sanders’ potential and family connections.” According to court documents, Darjean had undergone another spinal surgery in 2014, long before the incident. A publicly available surveillance video of the incident also does not show everything that happened, only parts of it from a distance.

Sanders had said in earlier testimony that Darjean used excessive force and choked him. Witness testimony supported that version of events, although Darjean said in pretrial testimony that Shilo “fake[ed]being choked.”

The bigger question Shilo’s lawyers are now raising is whether Darjean’s injuries were the result of Shilo’s behavior that day or something else that happened earlier, such as injuries from his baseball career.

What happens if Shilo Sanders loses this case?

Darjean wants the court to determine that the debts owed to him cannot be legally forgiven because they were proven to be the result of intentional and malicious conduct.

In 2022, the Texas court concluded that “Darjean’s injuries and damages were a foreseeable consequence of the physical assault perpetrated by Shio Sanders.”

However, Sanders failed to appear to enter an appeal, which now raises questions about whether it is too late for him to do so in bankruptcy court. So his lawyers are raising new questions about his injury and whether it was the result of intentional and malicious conduct on Sanders’ part.

Money that a debtor earns after the insolvency of a debtor is generally taboo for creditors in insolvency proceedings.

“It’s relatively rare that a debt cannot be discharged,” Littwin said. “But if you are a creditor with a non-discharged debt, you can collect on the debt once the case is closed.”

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