I'm talking about outspending on defense and offering settlements. It doesn't take much to exhaust a wage slave's capacity to keep a suit going, even pretrial.

There's a reason most cases settle before trial. The judicial system heavily incentivizes settlement and corporations can spend more on lawyers than their employees can.

The employee's lawyer is also gauging the cost benefit to their own time spent on the case, so the client/employee ends up getting shafted.

Of course, if there is a really egregious case, like you're envisioning, that can go farther down the road, but it's still an uphill battle for the plaintiff.

Edit: All this isn't even taking into account the fatigue plaintiffs go through, waiting for their cases to even get in front of a judge can take some serious time and then a trial can be even lengthier.