It is not a matter that the legal system has people who fail to understand - by the time lawsuits and laws are being considered all the primary participants understand in great detail that there is an opportunity to twist the narrative to achieve unrelated goals. "You cannot make a man understand what his job depends on him not understanding."
If you look at an initiating event and feel that the path to a proposed solution makes no sense - you are right. The original problem and the final solution are never linked via any legal process. Someone was searching for a way to set a high entry cost to becoming a commercial pilot; the Colgan crash gave them that chance.
In every big transaction, there is a magic moment during which a man has surrendered a treasure, and during which the man who is due to receive it has not yet done so. An alert lawyer will make that moment his own, possessing the treasure for a magic microsecond, taking a little of it, passing it on. If the man who is to receive the treasure is unused to wealth, has an inferiority complex and shapeless feelings of guilt, as most people do, the lawyer can often take as much as half the bundle, and still receive the recipient’s blubbering thanks. – Leech
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut.
Usually it's not worth doing too much, but a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity based on human suffering is nearly impossible for many to ignore.