It sounds like the defendants were lower-level lawyers at the firm that was initially suing Company 1. (According to one of the articles, it seems they were lat

It sounds like the defendants were lower-level lawyers at the firm that was initially suing Company 1. (According to one of the articles, it seems they were later fired and started their own firm.) Rather than offering to drop the case, they were allegedly offering to throw the case by deliberately botching certain tasks that their firm was assigning to them, presumably without the firm’s knowledge.