Some knowledgeable lawyers must have concluded that there is a likelihood of some liability (whether rightly or wrongly) to result in willingly parting with $800M. So in practice, there is liability.
Or that the court case would end up costing that much, or that staying in the news because of the court case would end up costing that much. There's plenty of costs besides just what the actual judgement might end up being.
In the context of this discussion, there is no reason to distinguish liability from the judgment itself, or liability from legal costs of preventing the judgement.
The liability in this context is money leaving the business’s pocket due to performing or not performing X action, regardless of who the money goes to.