The evidence as summarized by the court in the preliminary injunction ruling suggested that the only real basis of potential liability had to do with potential

The evidence as summarized by the court in the preliminary injunction ruling suggested that the only real basis of potential liability had to do with potential breaches of fiduciary duty relating to a possible joint venture of the parties to develop the underlying product. Generally, an aggrieved party can elect to pursue recovery either of the benefits received by the wrongdoing party (i.e., FG's profits from sales of the product) or of the losses it sustained in connection with its investment of time and effort into the product. In either case, where the product is essentially dead, the dollars recoverable would be quite small. A lost profits measure sounds appealing but would not apply. When a business or venture has no track record upon which to measure such profits with some degree of reliability, courts reject such a measure as speculative. Thus, the damage recovery here is likely to be trivial in comparison to the costs of pursuing the case. Moreover, under U.S. law (in contrast to U.K.), a prevailing party cannot force the other party to pay its attorneys' fees unless, among other possible but unusual bases, there is a contract specifying that a prevailing party gets such an award. Here, there was no written contract and hence no attorneys' fees provision. Thus, after a trial, each party would likely have to bear its own own attorneys' fees in the case. The major remedy - where the underlying product is a viable one - is an in-kind remedy by which TC could get a permanent injunction against FG barring it from selling or distributing the product itself. Again, this is meaningless where the product has no intrinsic worth. Finally, even if damages were meaningful, an entity such as FG would very likely be judgment proof, meaning that it would have no assets upon which to execute any judgment. Thus, TC's goals in this lawsuit, especially as framed by sophisticated counsel, really have nothing to do with the specific legal remedies it might get, as these have no real worth against this defendant or for this product.