How did IRC ping timeouts end up in a lawsuit?

Looks like they were also forced publish the lawsuit results in their websites:

https://news.tuxmachines.org/i/2025/12/case-judgment-summary.html

https://techrights.org/i/2025/12/case-judgment-summary.html

The case has a few comments by the High Court justice, including this one:

Dr and Mrs Schestowitz explained to me that these are matters they take very seriously, and that they are serious people running serious websites dealing in serious technical and socio-political matters. They do not admire facetiousness.

I am not sure if that is the justice skewering them but it seems like the sort of line my UK colleagues would use.

[edit: read through the court ruling, it sounds like they were already aware of each of their and differing views meant they just assumed he was responsible without considering other possibilities.

The abuse sounds awful, but the response of doing similar to an bystander isn’t reasonable]

Genuinely curious - given the myriad handle <-> timestamp complaints - why did they focus on mjg? Personal reasons? or just the only handle they could find an actual name for?

Somewhere the real troll is out there, “winning”, while the recipients of trolling and the falsely-accused both lose. This isn’t a happy case at all.