The judge got the sequence of events wrong. As soon as the defect was found it was reported. The previously known shimming fix was related to something else.
It is more like this. The judge decides he is going to rule one way. He then throws every reason he can even remotely think of into the decision to deter the losing party from appealing his finding.
Not much good to come out of this though. It may be the catalyst for change to aviation laws though.