No way, Breeze67. Tom was on duty from Nov 2nd, so he is responsible for what happened from that day on, not before.
We don’t know what had happened behind the scenes and what contract(s) had already been closed with Wainwrong, and whether it would have been possible to change anything or hot. But I know that if I would have been in Tom’s shoes and if I had seen that the disaster was unavoidable, I would have made very clear that this was definitely outside of my responsibility. Heck, perhaps the disaster was the reason to get Tom on board at all!