Report: New lawsuit filed against Deshaun Watson cites lawyer's controversial comment

Deshaun Watson is now facing a 24th civil lawsuit, according to a report.

Another lawsuit has been filed against Watson and cites some controversial comments from his lawyer, according to ESPN’s Sarah Barshop. His attorney, Rusty Hardin, used the phrase “happy endings” in a radio interview in Houston last week.

“I don’t know how many men are out there now that have had a massage that perhaps occasionally there was a happy ending,” Hardin said, via ProFootballTalk. “Maybe there’s nobody in your listening audience that that ever happened to. I do want to point out, if it has happened, it’s not a crime. OK? Unless you are paying somebody extra or so to give you some type of sexual activity, it’s not a crime. … Doing something or saying something or being a way that makes you uncomfortable is not a crime.”

Watson had another lawsuit come against him last week, taking the number of civil suits to 23. That one came in the wake of an HBO Sports special in which a massage therapist who filed one of the other lawsuits provided more details about what happened. In that filing, Watson allegedly offered $100,000 to each plaintiff to settle the other 22 suits, according to CBS Sports’ John Breech.

More on Deshaun Watson

Deshaun Watson was traded to the Cleveland Browns earlier this offseason after a grand jury ruled Watson wouldn’t face any criminal charges in several lawsuits against him. After the deal went through, Watson received a lucrative contract extension worth a fully guaranteed $230 million over five years. That’s the highest total guaranteed money for a quarterback in NFL history, blowing past the previous mark of $150.6 million set by Aaron Rodgers.

But the first year of that contract is worth a base salary of $1.035 million. That gives the Browns some leeway in case Watson faces a suspension, and Cleveland general manager Andrew Berry defended the decision during a press conference announcing the trade.

“We certainly understand the optics of it,” Berry told reporters. “I think for us, after we got comfortable with Deshaun, the contract was really a football decision. The things that were important to us, from a club perspective, were to have Deshaun under contract for another year and to have it structured in a manner that would allow us maximum flexibility to execute the rest of our offseason plan. And that’s specifically true as we kind of facilitate the next step with Baker and Baker’s contracts on our cap.

“I think probably the other thing to mention is that structure is very similar to … a lot of the larger player contracts that we already have on the books.”