So there is a chance - he claims - that they could win the appeals on the CA side.
Likely. A female judge or a POC judge could buy the weak, emotional arguments Myers was making, if they're lucky enough to draw one (which I think they're banking on, since they're already assuming they lost CA).
If they win that appeal, then the WI case moves forward at a later date after the appeals process. Pat saves 20-something thousand but the WI case tab turns into $150K - 200K easy, as it draws on into next year. We still don't know where he's getting this funding and why he believes it's not costing him anything now or in the future.
Everything depends on any logical/empathetic function that remains in Patrick's head...When he loses CA, he'll be stuck with the fact that, should the appeals process begin and he somehow miraculously wins it: He'll be stuck with an EVEN BIGGER BILL on the WI side, as the case moves forward AFTER the CA appeals. Something near a typical Harvard tuition cost. What kind of toll with that take on he and Nikki, financially? What kind of toll will that take on his (assumingely familial) financiers? This is where his remaining logical and empathetic functions in his thinking would have to kick in.
Jeffery Beaumont in Blue Velvet gets drawn into the apparent life of intrigue surrounding Dorothy Vallens, which leads him into the world of Frank Booth. He dives into this world of intrigue blind, not considering what it could do to him or what it IS doing to the people in his life; He's just full-on committed into digging up more and more, regardless of how selfish and reckless it is.
It's only when he's confronted with the dead body of Dorothy's husband and the comatose body of The Yellow Man with a part of his brain exposed, standing next to an old yellow TV looping a static grey screen in Dorothy's apartment, that he finally snaps out of it with the resolve "I'll let the police find you". He realizes, finally, that he's completely out of his depth and it's time to pull the ejector seat.
Of course by the time he realizes this it's already too late, as Frank Booth approaches the apartment in his Well-Dressed Man disguise. Jeffery narrowly escapes by being lucky enough to kill Frank but he has no illusions of any sort of hero status: He got in too deep on something he could not manage and was lucky enough to escape alive. That's more than enough to last a lifetime for old Jeffery, and way more than enough to appreciate a quiet life with Sandy and his aging family.
For his own sake: Patrick needs to be more like Jeffery.
