I'm aware, but that's not the point. I went to that company's website around the time that case was in the news, and 100% agreed with google downranking it.

The point is, downranking decisions by google have a non-trivial chance of being litigated in court, and at that point, I doubt that the decision will actually be made on the merits of the particular site. A sympathetic website owner with a sympathetic regulator is frequently going to win against google, regardless of how shady the site actually is.