Wait. First of all, I have already lost all confidence in our elections. But how can a judge award a "penalty" to defendants when Lake's team were never proven wrong? The defendants have demonstrated no "loss." All that has happened here is that the judge threw up so many restrictions and limitations on type of case, quality of case, and duration of case that Lake's team failed at proving they were right, as the judge intended.
He set up conditions where the only choice was failure, then took the proof they offered and ruled it inadequate to convince HIM. That doesn't mean that Lake was WRONG, only that they failed to meet the conditions HE set to prove they were right under conditions INTENDED for them to fail! And they did!