You're point is well taken. In my prior life I managed the "capital budget" for a fortune 500 company's manufacturing arm. 

With an expenditure the size we are talking about we would suffer, "carrier wise", if we hadn't anticipated this in the prior budget and now faced an expected much higher expenditure if we didn't buy a license quickly. So if I were faced with something like this, I'd need to use my "gut feel" during the previous budget cycle. I'd probably have proposed a line item to cover the possibility of having to buy a $XXM license, even if corporate rejected the budget proposal as "too uncertain", which they probably would have. Then my Group could go back to corporate after the court ruling and say "see, we told you we needed it - and we'd probably get it fast.