21
“This is complete and utter bullshit!”
Tom Cooper was way past the point of being angry. He was irate. He was incensed. He was ready to explode.
Shaking the letter that had arrived at their house by registered post the previous morning, he raised his voice even louder and yelled, “I’m fighting this. The whole way, and I’m countersuing that b—that woman. There’s no way she is pinning the blame on us for this. No way in HELL.”
He slammed the offending piece of paper on their family solicitor Matt Townsend’s desk and looked to those assembled around the office—including Madeleine—as if to say, Go ahead, I dare you to disagree with me.
Madeleine still felt sick to her stomach. The high that she had been riding since learning of her publishing deal had evaporated the moment she’d opened the letter.
At first she’d thought that there had been some sort of mistake. A clerical error or administrative oversight of sorts. It was only when she’d scanned the words on the paper that she realized this was actually happening...
Kate O’Hara was issuing legal proceedings against their family, looking to hold them accountable for little Rosie’s condition.
She’d phoned Tom at once, but he’d immediately dismissed the very idea.
“Complete nonsense. How can we possibly be blamed for the other girl’s illness, just because Clara wasn’t vaccinated?”
“It’s not just that, though,” Madeleine whispered, outlining how the main thrust of the complaint was that they—she—had sent Clara to school knowing she was ill.
And then Tom lost it completely. She could scarcely remember a time when she had seen her husband so angry. “What? But how were you supposed to know she had measles? No, she’s not getting away with this. I’ll call Matt immediately and get this sorted. And we’ll talk about it later. But whatever you do,” he added gently then, “do not blame yourself for this, Maddie. You did nothing wrong. We did nothing wrong.”
In the meantime, Madeleine suggested simply phoning Kate and talking this through with her. She was sure that once she (finally) got Rosie’s mum on the phone or sat down with her over coffee, everything could be straightened out.
Did Kate truly feel Clara was to blame for this, or was she just looking to lash out because her daughter was still unwell?
But Tom argued vociferously against this. He insisted that Madeleine shouldn’t talk to anyone—not even Lucy, because her best friend was also close to Kate.
Madeleine disagreed. There was no way she was shutting her friends out over this. Especially since there was no way she and Tom even had a case to answer, she was sure of it.
But now, sitting in their longtime family solicitor’s office in Dublin, Madeleine didn’t feel so sure this was going to go away, at least not easily or quietly. Tom kept talking about a countersuit and going after Kate for slander and defamation.
Oh, God, it’s just a huge mess.
Madeleine had never had a panic attack before, but she was pretty sure that she might be close to experiencing one for the very first time. Her head was swimming and she was struggling to formulate or verbalize a sentence, let alone get a word in edgewise.
“What should we do? How do we fight this?” demanded Tom. “This woman is not going to get away with this. Dragging us into some bullshit civil claim because she can’t take care of her own daughter. Well, if she thinks she’s having financial problems now and thinks that we’re going to be the answer to her prayers, she’s got another think coming. I’m going to drag her over the coals so hard she’s not going to know—”
“Tom!” Yes, he was trying to protect their family and she loved him for that, but just now he was totally out of control. Madeleine wasn’t just concerned about his level of rhetoric, but the fact that his face was so red she worried he might have a heart attack. She opened her mouth to continue, but their solicitor beat her to the punch.
“Please,” said Matt calmly from the other side of his desk, pulling the letter out of Tom’s reach. “Sit down for a minute. Let’s talk about this.”
Madeleine swallowed hard but felt the smallest amount of tension ease from her stomach when her husband duly obeyed the request. Maybe their solicitor could achieve what she had so far failed to do and keep him in check. She was also confident that Matt would be able to defuse this situation, change Tom’s mind about a countersuit and propose some sort of rational action for solving all of this.
Allowing herself to hope, she turned her furrowed brow to the man who had done so much for them as a family. Matt had advised them on many legal situations over the years (albeit, none like this), had helped them buy investment property, set up a trust for both of their kids, drawn up their will—he had been a true confidant, and Madeleine respected his opinion and advice.
She was sure that he wouldn’t steer them wrong.
Matt steepled his fingers on the polished cherrywood surface in front of him and leaned forward to meet the gaze of his clients on the other side of the desk. For the first time, Madeleine noticed the gray around his temples, too. How long had he been their solicitor? Fifteen years, maybe? He and Tom had been to university together and her husband had known him long before they were married. In any case, she trusted his advice would be sound.
“All right, Tom, I know you’re upset. It’s never a nice feeling to be issued with something like this. Especially after everything your own family has been through lately, what with Clara’s illness and everything.” Momentarily breaking from his monologue, he turned to Madeleine. “How is she, by the way? All better now?”
Madeleine’s mouth was dry, but she managed to get the words out with a nod of her head. “Yes. Right as rain now, thanks. She’s back in school.”
“All right, so. Next steps. We have to file a response to this first off. And to do that we need to set forth some reasons why you should not be held liable for the plaintiff’s damages. This will help us form the basis of a Motion to Dismiss.”
These were the kind of words Madeleine wanted to hear, and it made her spirits temporarily buoy.
“Yes. That’s perfect. That’s what we need. For it to be dismissed.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tom open his mouth and get ready to speak, but, worried he’d only work himself up again, she cut him off. “How does that happen? We can just talk to Kate and get this sorted out, yes?”
Matt smiled sadly. “I’m afraid that is a bit too simplistic, Madeleine, I’m sorry. And I would recommend keeping all correspondence about this between myself and the other solicitor. Of course, Ms. O’Hara can voluntarily withdraw proceedings, but oftentimes a Motion to Dismiss is granted by the courts when a settlement is reached, there is a lack of jurisdiction or there is a failure to prove duty of care. In this case, she has jurisdiction. So, we could easily get this taken care of if we settle. Or if the factual allegations of the complaint are in fact untrue. We are really going to have to talk all of this through.”
Madeleine nodded, considering this new information. “But can’t I simply go and talk to her? That would be so much easier and frankly—”
“Dammit, Madeleine, you aren’t talking to her! OK? Can we establish that? You’ve done enough talking,” Tom suddenly bellowed, catching his wife—and indeed Matt—completely off guard.
She felt her face flush red with embarrassment. Yes, he was stressed but Tom never spoke to her like that in public; and he certainly didn’t do so in the privacy of their own home. However, she couldn’t address his unacceptable behavior in that instant because he was already pushing his next topic of inquiry to Matt. “For the record, we aren’t settling. There isn’t a chance in hell of that, OK? So she can either dismiss this, or, I swear to God, I will fight this bitch every step of the way.”
“Tom!” Madeleine yelled, once again shocked at her husband’s completely uncharacteristic aggression. But he ignored her. “And that’s not all. If that woman thinks she’s going to have my family fund her single-mother lifestyle, she can piss up a river.”
Madeleine’s mouth dropped open. Now she was so appalled she felt sick. “Oh, my God, what is wrong with you?” She looked at their solicitor, who seemed relatively nonplussed by the exchange. “She lost her husband, Matt. Kate is a widow. He died, unexpectedly, but for some reason Tom makes it sound like she’s some sort of leech.”
She knew plenty of single mothers. Nothing made them different from her. Not at all, except for the fact that they were a million times stronger for taking on parenthood all by themselves. Whereas at least she had support. Or she thought she did, Madeleine clarified, glaring at her irate husband. “And now her daughter is in a coma. For God’s sake, Tom, have some compassion.”
But, if anything, Tom was only getting more emotional and incensed with every passing second. He seemed oblivious to the room, and his mortified, angry wife.
“We’ve broken no laws. There is no law against non-vaccination in this country. How dare she? Of course I’m sorry that her daughter is sick but that’s nothing to do with us, nor is it our fault she didn’t vaccinate her own kid. Why is this woman knocking on our door for this? I mean it. She is not going to drag my family’s name through the mud with this accusation and downright character attack. I have a career to think about. I have a reputation and business interests. No one is going to make some sort of example out of us. Our kids are entitled to a positive future without somebody thinking they can take it all away from them. No way is she getting away with this, Matt. We’re fighting it, and what’s more we want a countersuit. We want to sue her. We want to sue her ass off, so she thinks twice the next time she decides to do something like this...”
At that point Matt interjected with some advice about what they needed to do from a legal perspective if a countersuit truly was Tom’s choice. Madeleine felt her vision narrow and heard a strange ringing in her ears, even as she continued to witness the exchange between the two men, or, more to the point, Tom’s diatribe about the threat to their family’s character and personal liberties.
But at the mention of the character attack, Madeleine started to think about her own rapidly growing public profile. She thought about all that she had accomplished in the last year or so. It was this realization that really frightened her.
This lawsuit—especially if it got as far as the courts—could be highly public and very divisive. She thought about what her mother-in-law had pointed out before, about public opinion and what a hot-button topic vaccination could be. What would people say when word got out? Would they feel the same way as Kate did and blame Madeleine for passing the measles virus to her daughter? What would they think of her?
She had spent long enough on the internet to know how vicious and unforgiving anything to do with harm to a child could be. If these proceedings went ahead, would people fall on her family’s side or Kate’s?
And if they didn’t and she and Tom were castigated for their stance on vaccination, would Madeleine and her family very quickly become social pariahs?