said by AkFubar:There have been hundreds maybe thousands of successful lawsuits in the USA already.
A better term is a "successful extortion" not "successful lawsuit".
For technically, a user must be brought in front of the Judge in order for a "court filed lawsuit" to be successful. Settling out of Court is just a quick way to have the "potencial lawsuit notification" to disappear.
In the cases of these copyright enforcement goons, they sent notices of "intention to sue" in yadayada court(or maybe they did file to the court, for a time for the case to be heard), which caused users to crap their pants and pay out a "lawyer predetermined" "settlement fee"(aka: extortion). Which is how these cases work. Parts of Europe have even banned lawyers from practicing for a short time, for taking on all these cases, based on getting a "cut of the money paid by users" to the defendant.