Your attorney friend is absolutely correct. No evidence is necessary -- just a charge. Then it's between $15,000 and $30,000 to go to trial on a local basis with no expert witnesses. Add long distance, expert fees and you are easily looking at $150,000 to $500,000. I doubt any of the parents of these boys have that in liquid form.
After this, if by some nightmare scenario the AV prevails, they are looking at huge civil defense costs and settlements. Koby Bryant, these folks ain't.
The irony is, of course, if they didn't have that kind of money then they would not have been targeted in the first place.