Wolf then used the court system to bail himself out.
It should be noted that he "tried" to bail himself out (and that's not meant to be a pun). He was hoping that lightning would strike twice and he would score a second big prize.
The way the intellectual property laws were written in both countries limited what he could bring suits forward on (aka standing). The actual IP issues had been decided in Korea and a) they were much more limited in scope (copyright infringement) and b) they were not something you could even bring forward in a US court.
So they went to court claiming theft of "trade secrets". Their main problem was they presented little or no evidence of such. Most of the claims involved similarities in design of the blue prints. The "expert witness" forgot/overlooked/didn't know that most of his statistical analysis was seriously flawed by neglecting to factor out compliance with ISO 9600 standards. To be ISO compliant the parties must adhere to the organization of how material is presented down to the numbering/labeling of parts and the organization/layouts of the design. To make matters worse/more difficult these were designs of the same scale model locomotive done by the same designer. This why the appeals court tossed out the ruling and ordered a new trial. MTH's original attorney's were not on board for a second round and Calabrese worked out a settlement.
While the original finding seemed like a victory it was actually a major defeat. It did force Lionel into bankruptcy court but that provided Lionel with protection that blocked MTH from recovering any monies until that was settled and it allowed Lionel to reorganize in a way where it wound up stronger than when it went into bankruptcy. MTH continued to hemorrhage money on development of DCS/PS-3 and had to move it's favorable operations out of Korea to China and all that entailed. There was little chance of success on a trade secrets suit and he should have known that going in.