Checking the water’s depth before jumping in is always a good strategy. But it’s an especially key strategy—indeed, imperative—for litigating attorneys.
It’s been 26 years since a special grand jury concluded that Tawana Brawley’s allegation that she was the victim of a sexual attack by several law enforcement officials was a fabrication. And, more important here, the then-Attorney General, in referrals to disciplinary committees, alleged that two lawyers ostensibly acting on Brawley’s behalf, Alton H. Maddox, Jr. and C. Vernon Mason, “made false statements of fact under circumstances indicating that they knew the falsity of their statements, ‘deliberately closed [their] eyes to the facts that they had a duty to see…or recklessly stated as facts things of which [they were] ignorant.’”1
