The events that led to the bankruptcy of Deion Sanders’ son Shilo might go down in history as the biggest mistake of his father’s life.
That’s because the father could have prevented it all with one simple solution: He could have paid for a lawyer to make sure his son didn’t miss a court trial in 2022 that ended with a civil default judgment against Shilo Sanders of $11.89 million.
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Legal experts contacted by USA TODAY Sports shared this assessment as Shilo Sanders tries to get out of that debt in a bankruptcy trial in Denver Aug. 31. Deion Sanders, the head football coach at Colorado, might even testify in it as his team prepares to open the season at Georgia Tech on Sept. 3.
WRONG READ: Deion Sanders says Shilo already ‘won’ his case. The record says otherwise
MORE COURT DRAMA: Deion Sanders fires back at lawsuit over Prime logo
“From a civil litigation perspective, it’s not the norm for a high-wealth parent to allow a dependent to end up in a situation that a good lawyer could have avoided,” said Mechele Dickerson, a law professor at the University of Texas.
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Shilo Sanders, now 26, instead had no attorney from 2020 to 2023 and ended up with a worst-case outcome. He’s more than $11 million in debt to one man, John Darjean, a former security guard at his school in Dallas. Darjean sued Shilo Sanders and his parents in 2016, accusing Shilo Sanders of assaulting him and permanently injuring him at school in 2015, when Shilo Sanders was 15.
Why this old Sanders family saga is ‘messed up’
Darjean’s lawsuit continued for years, including with pretrial deposition testimony from Shilo Sanders and his father. Shilo Sanders claimed he acted in self-defense and filed counterclaims against Darjean and third-party claims against his school. Deion Sanders also called Darjean a “grifter,” implying he was targeting the Sanders’ family wealth.
Back then, Deion Sanders knew they needed to put up a defense in an active civil case where millions of dollars were at stake. He had attorneys on the case for him as a result.
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But then something big changed in 2019. And now the bankruptcy case is threatening to interfere with his job as he tries to get out of testifying in the bankruptcy trial next week.
“You rarely see cases involving high-wealth parties, or dependents, end up this messed up,” Dickerson said. She stressed that “a good lawyer would have made this go away early on.”
Deion Sanders was dismissed from the lawsuit in 2019
Darjean elected to drop Shilo Sanders’ mother Pilar from his lawsuit in October 2017. Then in 2019, Deion Sanders was dismissed from the case in a summary judgment ruling. That left Shilo Sanders as the lone remaining defendant in the case at age 19 when he went off to college as a freshman at South Carolina.
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There is no evidence in the court file that Deion Sanders had any further involvement in the case after his own dismissal from it in 2019. If he thought the case was over, it wasn’t.
In April 2020, Shilo Sanders’ attorneys then told the court in Dallas they “have been informed by (Shilo) Sanders that he is unwilling or unable to continue funding the defense of this case,” according to a court filing from those attorneys.
Shilo Sanders dropped his attorneys after that. He didn’t receive, ignored or was otherwise unaware of the trial notices that were sent to his email or street address, according to court records. The trial went on without him in 2022, ending with the $11.89 million default judgment against him.
If he had kept an attorney, that attorney would have received those notices for him and would not have let him miss the trial. If he had not missed the trial, he could have put up a defense against Darjean’s case in court, reducing the chance of getting hit with a huge judgment. An attorney also would have counseled him about reducing his financial risk by settling the case for a much smaller amount, as Darjean previously indicated he was open to accepting.
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“He should have kept his lawyers…” said Alex Hernandez, an attorney and bankruptcy expert in Florida. “Legally, it was a mistake. While Shilo was young, I also have to believe that his father has dealt with lawyers hundreds of times.”
‘Shilo remained unaware of the judgment until 2023’
Shilo Sanders was an adult at age 22 when the case went to trial in 2022. He had moved to join his father’s team at Jackson State in 2021, which could have led to him missing trial notices by mail in South Carolina. He still had a duty to notify the court of his whereabouts, as his new attorney in the case acknowledged to a judge in 2024.
But it’s also not common for a young adult in his early 20s to be facing this kind of legal and financial jeopardy — or to know the risks involved. He might not have had the financial means separate from his wealthy father to keep an attorney, as Shilo Sanders’ former attorneys indicated. This was before the NCAA legalized name, image and likeness compensation (NIL) for college athletes in 2021.
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“I just wonder where it went wrong that he didn’t have the guidance to understand the importance of his participation in trial and to have representation all along the way,” attorney Kate Buck told USA TODAY Sports in 2024.
Buck has worked sports and bankruptcy-related cases and is member of the firm McCarter & English.
“You wonder who was steering the ship and how was this able to happen to him where he didn’t have the understanding of the consequences of `You’re not finished. There is no attorney representing your interest.'” Buck said.
It wasn’t until 2023 that Shilo Sanders got an attorney back on the case. By that time, the trial was over, the judgment was final and Darjean had moved to collect on the debt. Shilo Sanders filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in October 2023 in an effort to get the debt removed so he can get a “fresh start,” according to his attorneys.
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“Shilo remained unaware of the judgment until 2023,” Shilo’s new attorneys stated in court documents.
What Deion Sanders has said about his son Shilo’s case
The University of Colorado has said Deion Sanders declines comment on the pending bankruptcy case.
This whole strange saga has dragged on for 11 years and has become a sore subject for him. When he has been asked about it, he has made the misleading claim his son already “won” the case and was awarded money for it. In fact, his son filed for bankruptcy because he lost the civil lawsuit against him and got hit with the default judgment.
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Deion Sanders made that claim again at a news conference Aug. 24. He is believed to be referring to a related but separate case Shilo Sanders filed against his former school and its founder – a third-party lawsuit that ended with an undisclosed settlement in Texas in early 2019 — about the same time that Deion Sanders was dropped from Darjean’s lawsuit. That third-party case had no bearing on his case with Darjean or his bankruptcy case.
“Shilo… ain’t done nothing wrong,” Sanders said Aug. 24.
If Deion Sanders testifies at his son’s looming bankruptcy trial, it will be about the events of the day of his son’s incident with Darjean at school in 2015, not about his involvement or lack of involvement in the case after that. Darjean said he was trying to confiscate Shilo Sanders’ phone at Deion Sanders’ request when Shilo punched him and swung a roundhouse elbow into his chest, leading to severe spinal problems and incontinence.
Darjean initially sued his parents for negligence before they were dropped from the case by early 2019. Darjean now is expected to appear at the bankruptcy trial, where his attorney will argue that the Shilo Sanders shouldn’t be allowed to discharge the debt to him because it stems from a “willful and malicious injury.”
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Shilo Sanders no longer lacks for lawyers. He had four representing him in the case at a recent pretrial hearing.
Darjean had one.
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Is Deion Sanders to blame for son Shilo’s bankruptcy? ‘It was a mistake’
