I think this falls somewhere between "moral hazard" and "lawyers aren't assigned to do that". If an open case saw a change of venue and then produced large dam

I think this falls somewhere between "moral hazard" and "lawyers aren't assigned to do that". If an open case saw a change of venue and then produced large damages, that's easily interpreted as a failure of the legal team to protect Google. If Google's retention rate or recruiting efficiency drop by some percentage, it might well cost more in lost expertise and recruiting work than a bad lawsuit would. But it wouldn't necessarily be discernible as a result of this decision, or even the sexual misconduct issue in general. I wouldn't expect the lawyers involved to be able to predict the size of that second impact and decide accordingly. Certainly corporate lawyers sometimes enforce counterproductive decisions, but it's almost always down around the project level. For an issue Pichai is personally engaging with, it'd be pretty strange for a lawyer to go beyond saying "This is the safest legal option, but it may have other consequences. If you don't take it, here's the level of legal risk." Somebody else ought to be weighing the costs, and in an ideal world ethics, of making that decision.