We recently completed a spot with Drew Forrester of WNST in Baltimore, and we discussed at the top of the segment the lawsuit filed against Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
Despite the obvious Ravens rooting bias against anyone from the ‘Burgh, Forrester expressed skepticism regarding the case, due to the apparent absence of criminal charges.
Regardless of whether criminal charges were, have been, or will be filed, the fact that Andrea McNulty has opted to proceed in civil court does not automatically make her claims less credible. This isn’t a pro se filing that she cobbled together on a first-generation Mac and printed via dot matrix. She has enough evidence and/or tells a sufficiently compelling story to persuade a lawyer to take the case.
Of course, that fact won’t impress many of you, given that lawyers don’t have the greatest of reputations. But the fact that a lawyer is willing to risk his own reputation by taking the case should at least prompt folks to keep an open mind at this stage of the game.
And the lawyer who took the case, Calvin Dunlap, is no stranger to high-profile litigation. As our own Taco Bill discovered via his own first-generation Mac with dot-matrix printer, Dunlap represented the wife of Nevada’s governor in a nasty divorce proceeding.
Our main point for now is that everyone should keep an open mind. No one should presume that Roethlisberger did it, and no one should presume that Andrea McNulty is making it all up.
Then again, the reality is that it’s one or the other. We’ve seen the allegations in the complaint (we’ll share the details once we get a certified copy of the document from the courthouse clerk), and this incident was not the result of a misunderstanding.
The complaint makes it clear that either Roethlisberger is guilty as sin, or McNulty has fabricated the entire case.
For now, we’re not choosing sides. But we intend to apply the same degree of curiosity and cynicism that we have applied in past legal cases, even if the ultimate outcome means that residing 100 miles from Pittsburgh is about 500 miles too close.