Former professional baseball and football player Vincent “Bo Jackson“, a running back who won the Heisman Trophy at Auburn, received a $21 million decision in his civil lawsuit against his niece and nephew for attempting to extort him.
The Feb. 2 ruling includes a permanent protection order prohibiting Thomas Lee Anderson and his sister, Erica M. Anderson Ross, from further harassing or contacting Jackson and his close family members.
The Andersons must also keep at least 500 yards away from the Jacksons and erase any posts about them from social media, according to press reports.
The complaint, filed in April, claimed that Jackson’s family attempted to extort $20 million from him through harassment and intimidation.
“Unfortunately for those attempting to extort $20 million dollars from Jackson and his family, Bo still hits back hard,” Jackson’s attorneys, Robert Ingram, and David Conley, stated in a press release regarding the lawsuit on Monday.
Jackson, 61, said the harassment began in 2022 and included threatening social media posts and messages, public claims that painted him in a negative light, and public revelation of private information with the intent to cause him serious emotional distress, according to WSB-TV.
According to the complaint, Thomas Anderson stated on Facebook that he would expose Jackson’s images, text messages, and medical records to “show America” that he wasn’t kidding around.
According to Jackson, the Andersons, with the assistance of an Atlanta attorney, demanded the money in exchange for stopping their behavior. He claims they threatened to arrive at a restaurant near his house and interrupt a charity event he hosted in Auburn in April as a form of harassment and intimidation.
According to the lawsuit, Jackson feared for his own and his immediate family’s safety. It requested a stalking protection order against the Andersons, as well as unspecified damages for deliberate infliction of mental distress and breach of privacy. Jackson also filed a civil conspiracy action against the siblings.
The court determined that there was no legitimate reason for these activities, and that after receiving a cease and desist letter from Jackson’s counsel, the intimidation and harassment persisted.
Cobb County Superior Court Judge Jason D. Marbutt stated in his ruling that the Andersons and their counsel did not refute Jackson’s charges or engage in the case following a May 2023 hearing in which they agreed to a temporary protection order, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. According to the newspaper, the court declared the Andersons in default and accepted all of Jackson’s charges as accurate.
“Reasonable people would find defendants’ behavior extreme and outrageous,” he wrote. “The court saw evidence that an attorney representing defendants claimed his clients’ conduct would cease for the sum of $20 million.”