Well, the beauty of law (and the most awful thing about it), is that "the law is an ass" and its meaning is down to the interpretation of whoever reads it. Lawyer A reads paragraph B and gets interprets C, while a similarly minded lawyer reads B and sees D. If you pay someone enough they can argue anything for you in court. While I don't agree with what he did (and I don't doubt that he put a friendly spin on the story), and assuming we have the whole story (which for 13 months work seems unlikely), it seems harsh. Like everything (sexism, racism etc), the actual existance and strength of the act itself is decided upon by the victim.
If the law was a program there would be multiple definition errors all over the place.