Tony answered a question of mine. He said, "if a settlement is reached, a filing will be made to end the lawsuit." That hasn't happened yet. So that answers my question of the possibility that they settled out of court already. They haven't. I thought the sequence might be to dismiss the legal team, then announce the out-of-court settlement and dismiss the case.
Now I see it's possible it's about something else. I still don't see why it's an insane move, necessarily, since we don't know what went on between Monique and her lawyers, or some other out-of-court preliminary negotiation that might have gone on.
I agree with another poster that regarding Monique, and by extension her husband, Miscavige will go to great lengths not to lose in public, or settle in court record to Monique and Ray J. Ray J has won with Debbie Cook and the two private investigators hired to follow Pat Broeker for decades.
So if Miscavige can settle out-of-court with Monique in a way that is mysterious or makes Monique and Marty appear foolish, or like they didn't win, or won very little, he'll do that. That will include gagging them to the hilt, which neither of them would mind at this point, since they both would probably like to leave Scientology and Scientology criticism behind.
If they get a settlement, Miscavige will not allow them to say anything about it, or make Marty say it is just enough to cover legal costs, when in reality it is substantially more. In other words, it's possible we'll never really know what happened.
The trial would have been very stressful for Monique, and potentially much more public than anything that has gone before. CoS may have given her the ultimatum, of going to trial or out-of-court settlement, including that she must dismiss her legal team before they finalize the settlement. If Monique really didn't want to go to trial, but before that thought CoS would be much more open to a settlement through Ray J, that is when she would have made a decision like that.
I certainly hope they get a large settlement, and this isn't about them breaking down Monique in some other way, not having to do with a substantial settlement.