When I was in college my business professor told us a good story about companies avoiding litigation by settling. There was a guy in jail that would write companies whose stocks had recently gone down in price and tell them that he had lost X dollars (usually 5-10k) and that he was going to sue because their poor management was the reason for the loss. He had 40-50k in his account before a company decided to pay their lawyers to fight him and showed that he was a fraud.