Immeritorious

Their acceptance indeed, as a formula, may show a willing and tractable spirit, and they may to that extent have a value : but such acceptance differs of course from belief in being admittedly a voluntary act, and not a mere immeritorious and reluctant yielding to the brute weight of evidence.

As long as the defence is credible and can be reasonably substantiated so that the counterclaim is not evidently immeritorious, the attacked party has little to lose, and may gain time.