While I agree with the Nine's actual positions, I do wish that they had done the honorable thing and simply walked away. I think that in quite a few cases, it was the other way around, where the Nine had accuмulated quite a few of the properties in their own names rather than in that of the Archbishop or the SSPX, and that the SSPX had to sue them to get (some of them) back ... and that was actually more consistent with US law, where, for instance, the Pope Pius XII in Rome did not own the properties of the Diocese of Chicago (except of course that he did morally and theologically).
I can understand their reasoning to a point, where the faithful in the US had provided the money for those properties, and they felt that the faithful had a right to not be receiving Sacraments from doubtful priests, but I think that if they had taken the more dignified road, they could have hit the "reset" button much more quickly, since, even though, they ended up not having to start from scratch, they did lose a lot of support from the faithful due to the manner in which they conducted themselves, which hurt them more in the long term, and Father Cekada had to have been the worst, where he spoke in very derogatory ways to and about the Archbishop during the court proceedings ... may God have mercy on his soul.
I know that I personally would never have dared to bring the Archbishop to court and incur that type of excommunication, and would not have somehow believed I could "epikeia" my way out of that. I would have split from the others, and told Archbishop Lefebvre something along the lines of, "I thank you so much, Your Grace, for everything you have done for me, for my Holy Orders, and for what you are doing for the Church and Tradition, but I am required to follow my own conscience in this matter, and perhaps if you change your mind about this some day [which he actually did later ... recalling that the split was NOT about sedevacantism, as some of The Nine had not originally even been SV], you might accept me back. Until then I believe that God calls me elsewhere."