Meaning of the words "lay at the outer fringe of"

The text quoted is from online lecture notes used by law students in the UK, and related to the topic of "economic loss". The topic covers various kinds of economic (money) loss to a company or person, caused by the actions of another company or person, and whether, and to what extent, those losses are 'recoverable' (whether a court may legally order the losses to be paid by their causer to the victim). If a loss is within the area, zone, or category of 'recoverability', it is recoverable. Some losses are obviously, and without argument, within that area, and some are definitely not. Others are within the zone, but 'near the fringe (or edge)'. The reasons for supposing that they are recoverable are not obvious or strong. Those are the ones which generate more fees for lawyers, and salaries or fees for judges, because there will be more arguments and counter-arguments put forward by the two sides. Understanding these matters is part of a legal education. If something is 'at the outer fringe' of some conceptual area then it is possibly inside, or possibly outside that area.

What you have here is 'legal language'; the meanings can be different from normal English text. Further, in my case, it seems to be text from the UK (the US does not have 'lorries'), and my knowledge of English law is limited to those parts which are similar to US law. And I don't necessarily know where they overlap.

All that said: "at the outer fringe of recoverability" probably refers to legal reasoning that leads to the conclusion that the cost mentioned is "recoverable", that is, whether it is legally sound to conclude that the company which paid the train operating companies could expect the court to order the lorry driver to pay them back.

As for "at the outer fringe", I'd always thought that referred to clothing which has an expanse of fabric of some sort, and then at the edge there's a fringe, and beyond the fringe there is nothing (nothing connected with the clothing). If you were touching the fabric and moved your finger towards the edge, and you reached the 'outer fringe', you were about to run off the edge of the clothing. Fringe is what you have at the edge of things, so if something is 'at the outer fringe', it's almost beyond the thing with the fringe entirely.