Overview
- Day 1 of the trial, held Monday, Aug. 31, featured prerecorded witnesses who said Sanders struck school security guard John Darjean during a 2015 confrontation.
- The core legal question is whether the conduct that produced the $11.89 million default judgment qualifies as a 'willful and malicious' injury that cannot be erased in Chapter 7 bankruptcy or whether Sanders acted in self-defense.
- The $11.89 million figure comes from a 2022 default judgment entered after Sanders did not appear at the Texas trial, and Darjean is asking the bankruptcy court to leave that debt intact.
- Sanders’ lawyers say evidence and video will show Darjean escalated and 'manhandled' a 15-year-old Sanders, and the defense has signaled it will present live testimony later in the week including the possible remote availability of Deion Sanders.
- The judge must weigh credibility from limited video and past testimony rather than live contemporaneous evidence, and his ruling will shape whether Sanders is relieved of the debt and how similar default-judgment cases are treated in bankruptcy.