As an ex-lawyer (though not in the US), I know this is a common case. When taken individually, it looks absurd that a company would do such a thing when it is

As an ex-lawyer (though not in the US), I know this is a common case. When taken individually, it looks absurd that a company would do such a thing when it is obvious that it is an economic loss. In reality, though, most companies just look at those kind of cases in "bulk". When analyzing things at that level, those kind of outliers simply dissolve in a sea of other more economically viable legal challenges. Those make good news stories, but in the end it is just a byproduct of scale. I once had to go to a hearing for a 2 dollar case (converted from BRL) in a small court claim for a big Brazilian telecom. The sued company paid 10 dollars for my taxi, 50 dollars for each of my hours and about 20 dollars more for the other expenses. In the end, that single 2 dollar lawsuit cost the company about 500 dollars. Looking at just that case, it seems absurd. But considering that that same company had 2000+ small court claims every single month, it makes sense that simply hiring someone to approve our analysis that those cases were not worth it would cost 100x more than just moving on. It was just cheaper to just keep going than to do a cost/benefit analysis on each of the thousands of suits they receivd every month. This is specially bad in the US where the system is common law and that can set a precedent (in my case my country uses civil law, where precedents are not that strong).