Antonio Brown's Post-Football Hot Streak Continues as He's Order to Pay $1.2 Million to That Truck Driver He Attacked With Rocks
Mike Ehrmann. Getty Images.Ah, to be Antonio Brown.
Envy isn't just a sin, it's one of the Seven Deadly ones. So that makes it a biggie. Still, it's hard not to look at your own humdrum, work-a-day life of quiet desperation and wish you were walking in his Uggs. You might have assumed things would quiet down for AB once he (again) made himself unemployable by going Half Monty and storming off the field last season. But you'd be mistaken.
Every day for Brown is a non-stop, high-octane, nitro-powered thrill ride of drama and excitement. When he's not being the worst frenemy a guy could have in his hour of need:
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… he's making headline news over something he did in early 2020. Which is to say, before Tom Brady took him onto his roster and into his home for the second time. Namely, this:
And now, nearly three years later, we have an update on those crazy shenanigans of his. The wheels of justice turn slowly sometimes, but they do turn:
Source - TMZ Sports has learned the former NFL star has been ordered to pay a moving truck driver $1.2 MILLION after he allegedly attacked the guy nearly three years ago.
A Broward County jury awarded the damages to Anton Tumanov earlier this month, according to court records … after Brown failed to respond or show up to hearings in the case.
Per court docs, the jury found Brown liable for $407,000 for Tumanov's past and future medical expenses … as well as $793,000 for past and future pain and suffering. …
Tumanov said the 34-year-old damaged his vehicle and hit him multiple times. In the suit, he said it all caused him "severe bodily injuries."
For the record, Brown's beef with Anton Tumanov was that he was taking delivery of a moving truck full of furniture. But Tumanov refused to unload the truck until received the balance of the payment he was owed, citing company policy. So rather than pull out his credit card, go find his checkbook or Venmo the money, he tried to settle the matter like adults do. By chucking rocks at the guy until he got his stuff.
On the criminal case the prosecutors accepted a deal where Brown had to, like Andy Bernard after he put his fist through a wall, take a Management course. Anger Management. Also, do community service and pay a fine. But now this civil jury adds $1.2 million, which will be tacked on to the end of the criminal penalty. That's an expensive way of expressing your disagreement with a vendor's business practices. But consistent with AB's approach to pretty much everything.
Which brings up a question I've been asking myself more and more lately. And that is how much understanding do we owe other people?
It's a deep, philosophical question. One that gets to the very heart of all human interaction. Basically it boils down to how judgey is the right amount of judginess?
On the one hand, we all desire to consider ourselves moral and virtuous. And that often means trying to be sympathetic to others. It's believed that the rise of fiction writing in the Middle Ages fundamentally changed who humans think, because it allowed people to see things from the characters' perspectives. To understand their thoughts, emotions, and motivations. So for instance, you'd read Hamlet and like to think if you were in that world, you'd emphasize with him because he's a poor, misunderstood soul who didn't ask for his dead father to haunt him into killing the uncle who's boning his mom. And you wouldn't judge him for being a weak, dull, moody, indecisive little puss boy who drove his girlfriend insane, like everyone else does.
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On the other hand, while empathy is a good thing, it has to have limits. If you're a couple of teenagers making out at camp and a guy in a mask and jumpsuit jams a boat hook through your date's torso, you're not required to say, "I'm really sorry your mom was so strict with you," while there's a beating heart dangling in your face. The moral dilemma then becomes where exactly we draw the line.
And at the risk of being harsh, I'm going to say I have zero empathy for Antonio Brown. None. He's an unhinged, unstable, highly volatile manchild. You can diagnose that anyway you like, and I'll agree that he is mentally ill. This will be controversial I'm sure, but I have a strict "No Pelting Rocks at People Just Trying to Earn an Honest Living" policy that supersedes his mental problems. More to the point, he's 36 years old. Was touched by the gods with physical abilities that are the envy of all but a handful of humans ever born. And has squandered them.
I'll add that he's squandered them by choice. Whatever his mental illness, it's treatable. It's not incurable cancer. There is a world of help available for him. He has court orders requiring him to get it. And instead he keeps acting like the world owes it to him to keep accepting all his unacceptable behaviors. Just because for a time in his life, he could catch footballs. Well since no footballs are being thrown his way, he's left with zero redeeming qualities. And as far as I'm concerned, I hope keeps losing lawsuits until he has nothing left. Because the world will be a better place if all the money he made catching passes was in the bank accounts of truck drivers and anyone else he's harmed.