You probably remember the 'Pacman Jones is the worst person alive' craze a few years back, most of which stemmed from a particularly nasty incident outside a Las Vegas strip club. The ruckus started with Jones showering the place with thousands of dollars of cash, which led to an escalated amount of unecessary celebrity type sh*t, which led to a near-deadly triple shooting. The guman who started the firefight had apparently acted on Jones' orders.

Jones was sentenced to pay club manager Tommy Urbanski--who is now paralyzed from the waist down--$9.6 million in compensation. His wife was awarded $750,000 for loss of marital relations. Aaron Cudworth, a bouncer who was serverly injured from the brawl, was awarded $1.3 million. 

Jones' lawyer, who plans to appeal the ruling, argued that the damages were way too financially crippling, even for an NFL player:

"It's obviously a devastating amount for him financially," Rasmussen said. "He has really worked hard to make a comeback with his NFL career. He doesn't make enough money to pay that judgment."

She said the jury in the civil case likely was swayed by the sympathetic sight of Urbanski in his wheelchair and Jones' celebrity.

"People perceive him as a person who is able to pay $11 million," she said. "Adam doesn't even get paid until he plays his first game."

Urbanski, on the other hand, hopes that his steep price tag will cause prevent high-profile athletes from following in Jones' ill-advised footsteps:

"They've got to clean up their acts," he said. "All of them."

Whatever the end result of this, Urbanski is obviously right. There is absolutely zero reason for something like this to ever happen. Excessiveness and celebrity go hand in hand, but there's really no need for those hands to be holding semi-automatics.  

Let this be a lesson in if you're gonna speak at all, make sure that its your game--and not the dangerous toys of your entourage-- that do the talking. 

[H/T: ESPN]