Managing a large aircraft (or a small one for that matter) is not a democratic process; decisions need to be made and at times they will not be popular. The captain of the aircraft is the individual delegated by the company (and the regulatory authority) to make such decisions.
Someone has screwed up here - I would place my money on the fact that the captain's calculation on whether his discretionary decision was legal or not was correct. And I would hazard a guess that the CC's decision was based on the fact that they were going to be tired at the end of all of this.
My point is that it won't take more than one round-table to work out who was at fault in this decision-making process. And if the CC are unable to justify their decision then the company should ****-can the lot of them to make it clear to rest of the company that decisions such as this require responsibility.
4HP