Over a period of several years, the manager and part-owner of a saloon ignored communications from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) advising him that in order to legally allow performances of songs from the ASCAP repertory, he had to have a license.  Six music publishing companies sued the manager and the saloon for copyright infringement and obtained an award of $40,000.  Although the judgment was one of default, there was substantial evidence in the court record of the manager's  disregard of the legal requirement to obtain a license to publicly perform copyrighted musical compositions. 

I assume this is the suit that you are referring to?

Link

"ASCAP employs representatives to travel to malls and concert venues to look for those breaking the law and the organization sues hundreds around the country each week, he said."

Desperate is as desperate does. In the search query I saw one article where Springsteen saw they were suing a bar on his behalf and he had his name taken out of the suit.

Looks like they prevail in most of them through settlement. Heck, I imagine legal fees would be more than 30-40K.

Twisted Iron Horse Saloon vs...

ASCAP has been getting more and more aggressive in the past several years.  The controversy is that they are doing it "on behalf of the artist" and there are two issues with that.  

1.  The artist isn't always the one who the money is for.  I'm not sure about the case with Springsteen, but I have heard of many others where it's actually the Record Company who is getting the money.  The artist's name they used wasn't actually listed for that type of royalty, ASCAP just used the name as a tactic.

2.  They have gone after clubs in artists names of artists who just did not use BMI or ASCAP to register their music.