As anyone who has been sued can tell you, litigation is, at best, an annoyance, and at worst, and much more typically, scary. stressful, time consuming and expensive. Given that the longstanding rule of American jurisprudence is that each party to the lawsuit pays its own attorney's fees (absent a contractual or statutory provision to the contrary), defendants can find themselves at the mercy of aggressive plaintiff's who are able to inflict not insignificant harm by the simple act of filing a complaint.

And while strategic and tactical considerations have always been part of a lawyer's calculus in determining when, where, and whom to sue, at times the brute force of a lawsuit becomes its own reason for being.