With fat-finger trades, you're often dealing with huge amounts of money, and the counter parties are often shell corporations. A friend of mine was actually on

With fat-finger trades, you're often dealing with huge amounts of money, and the counter parties are often shell corporations. A friend of mine was actually one of the defense attorneys for a hedge fund that had the legal entity for one of its funds go bankrupt on some electricity trades where the clearinghouse's margin requirements weren't large enough. The clearing house tried to recoup its losses from a sister fund under the same hedge fund. If I recall correctly, the bankrupt fund actually lost a bunch of money to its sister fund. The clearing house ended up losing in court. Another friend of mine runs an electricity trading fund, and was pretty upset at the ruling. After the court loss, the clearing house needed to recoup its losses by raising fees. Once trades have actually cleared, the only recourse is often a messy court battle.