Your points are well taken, but usually when responding to a lawsuit -- especially a big dollar suit against a deep-pocketed corporation with an army of attorneys -- the defending legal team will pile on every exonerating thing it can possibly think of, and continue to do so throughout the proceedings, because every single one is not just a chance to win but a chance to argue on appeal if they lose.

So they will throw in whatever they can think of, because something somewhere might stick, and meanwhile everything they tack on is something else the plaintiffs have to address in their own filings, adding to the plaintiff's upfront cost of bringing the suit.