My uneducated guess is that in the beginning the Watchtower assumed Candaces case was insignificant. After all, she was only sueing for a small amount of money. Therefore, they used their 2ond string lawer/s and saved the best ones for higher $$$ cases. The interesting twist was that she wouldn't settle UNLESS the WT$ implimented a POLICY CHANGE of reporting pedophiles to the authorities and alerting the congregation to the risk.
The boys at Bethel would NEVER let some young woman tell THEM what to do. After all, they think God talks to and through them. If their precious male PRIDE hadn't surfaced they would have settled, kept their money and made it safer to be a JW child.
I'm sure the whole bunch was absolutely blindsided by the verdict.