Burden of Truth

When it’s suspected that her big-pharma client’s vaccine has caused a mysterious illness affecting a handful of teenage girls, high-powered attorney Joanna Hanley returns to her hometown of Millwood to quickly and quietly settle the case. But when she’s forced to go up against an old friend from high school, she begins to second guess the choices she’s made along the path to partnership in her father’s prestigious big city law firm. A turn in the case reveals that her client is not at fault, but rather than return home with another easy win, Joanna decides to stay and dig into a case she believes could turn into a profitable class action law suit.

A fish out of water in a town that’s as foreign as it is familiar, Joanna must reckon with questions over her family’s hasty departure when she was a teenager, while attempting to convince the locals that she has in fact switched sides. After footing the bill for medical testing of the sick girls, and running commonalities tests, Joanna suspects that the cause of the illness is an environmental toxin on the High School Athletic Field. When she fails to convince the partners in her law firm that she and her “new partner” Billy Crawford have a suit worth pursuing, Joanna elects to remain in Millwood and see the case through without her firm’s deep-pocketed support.

Relying on her esteemed reputation as a partner at CTS, Joanna convinces a hydrologist to come to Millwood to test the soil. With reluctant permission from the local Mayor, Joanna and Billy narrow down their list of suspects to a handful of industrial sites in the community. After testing the soil and groundwater around town, they make the startling discovery that the field is the source of the toxin when they uncover barrels of sludge buried there. But someone would rather they stop digging and the pair get run off the road.

Convinced that the local steel mill and its owner Ben Matheson are responsible for the barrels, Joanna and Billy go after him but don’t have enough to make the allegation stick. When her father shows up and persuades her that Ben’s offer to clean the field is the best deal she’s going to get, Joanna decides to pack up to return home. However a shocking revelation in her personal life leads her to question everything her father has ever told her. Joanna resigns from her father’s firm, and in a knee-jerk reaction files a statement of claim against the mill.

Anger over the claim against the mill pits the sick girls and their families against employees of the mill who worry that their jobs are on the line. When the local Pastor’s daughter becomes afflicted with the illness, he blames the girls themselves. Parents begin keeping their healthy kids home from school, so to quell the mounting hysteria the High School Principal cracks down on the affected girls and prevents them from attending their prom. Joanna fires back at the school, but victory eludes her. When the kids decide to throw a prom of their own, Billy and Joanna are made honorary prom king and queen. However the moment is over-shadowed by the mill’s answer to her claim – they’ve hired her father’s law firm to represent them, and they plan to annihilate her.

As threats against Joanna and Billy escalate, Joanna digs her heels in on the case. Relying on the expert testimony of a respected neuropsychologist, Joanna expects he’ll prove once and for all that the girls have been poisoned. Instead after assessing them, he pronounces the ailment “all in their heads,” that they have what’s called a Conversion Disorder. With the opposition breathing down their neck, Joanna and Billy scramble to salvage their suit. Unfortunately their expert witness switches sides, and the case gets dismissed. The good news is, they might have a cure.