Lawyering is a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Lots of companies fall into the trap of letting lawyers make business decisions instead of being advisors of legal risk/etc to the business.
Done properly, they are advisors 99% of the time.
Which means, to answer your question, there are plentyof situations where the outcome of the lawsuit is not as valuable to the business as the narrative/etc.
For example, there are people/companies whose brand is their most valuable asset. "family friendly" celebrities are a common example, i think.
For them, the narrative and control of it may be way more important than winning or losing.
Now, i would still say - even in that case, the person going off and talking in public without someone helping them know what to say (not necessarily a lawyer) is still often a really bad idea. They are often too close to it, etc, to really be objective about what will make the most sense, even if the goal is "control the narrative" rather than 'win the lawsuit" or whatever.
But in those cases, working with a crisis manager or whatever, if the most important thing is the perception, have at it.
At the same time, people involved tend to be in a bit of a bubble. It often feels more critical, urgent, and well known than it really often is.
So for example, here, i'm sure to lots of employees/Matt it feels like a thing everyone is talking about. But in reality, uh, its not. It isn't carried by any major news site, and even among the general open source or developer community, i would bet 99% of people have no idea about any of this.
Even within their customer base i would imagine it still isn't widespread knowledge (though it likely will be over say the next week).
So in a case like this, you have time to catch your breath, engage your best people, and think about your response.
Which you should take.
That isn't always the case mind you (it's like any incident response). But i think it's the case here.
Lawyering is a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Lots of companies fall into the trap of letting lawyers make business decisions instead of being advisors of legal risk/etc to the business.
Done properly, they are advisors 99% of the time.
Which means, to answer your question, there are plentyof situations where the outcome of the lawsuit is not as valuable to the business as the narrative/etc.
For example, there are people/companies whose brand is their most valuable asset. "family friendly" celebrities are a common example, i think.
For them, the narrative and control of it may be way more important than winning or losing.
Now, i would still say - even in that case, the person going off and talking in public without someone helping them know what to say (not necessarily a lawyer) is still often a really bad idea. They are often too close to it, etc, to really be objective about what will make the most sense, even if the goal is "control the narrative" rather than 'win the lawsuit" or whatever.
But in those cases, working with a crisis manager or whatever, if the most important thing is the perception, have at it.
At the same time, people involved tend to be in a bit of a bubble. It often feels more critical, urgent, and well known than it really often is.
So for example, here, i'm sure to lots of employees/Matt it feels like a thing everyone is talking about. But in reality, uh, its not. It isn't carried by any major news site, and even among the general open source or developer community, i would bet 99% of people have no idea about any of this.
Even within their customer base i would imagine it still isn't widespread knowledge (though it likely will be over say the next week).
So in a case like this, you have time to catch your breath, engage your best people, and think about your response. Which you should take.
That isn't always the case mind you (it's like any incident response). But i think it's the case here.