[rwallace]

There's also a big question about whether winning is actually necessary in the typical case.

Think about it: if this sets precedent, anyone with enough money who dislikes you for any reason can ruin you by filing a bogus lawsuit about something you putatively did a few decades ago. Sure, in theory you could eventually win based on preponderance of the evidence. In practice, unless you're a multimillionaire like Doig, the legal costs will bankrupt you before that.

Still think it was okay for the judge to send this to trial?

[girvo]

What you've described can already happen, today, without any new precedent.

[dragonwriter]

The judge sending this to trial was following well established law; even if trial court decisions did set precedent, there would be nothing new for it to set: that anyone can file a lawsuit based on actions that are current enough to be within the relevant statute of limitations even if what is necessary to present a colorable legal claim is a disputed claim about facts in the distant past is not only settled law, it's hard to see how the legal system could function if it weren't the case. If it weren't, all you would need to prevent a perfectly valid case from being prosecuted is to identify a critical fact to the case that occurred far enough in the past and invent a bogus dispute over it.