My experience tells me that the cue was broken due to lateral force, and that the entire story has not been told. My experience tells me that something happened to that cue that the player has done to other cues without mishap, but this time the cue broke, and now he's lost the money he paid for the cue & is trying to recover as much as he can, any way he can. All he can do is try pressuring the builder to accept responsibility, which is why he posted it in a public forum. Doubtful that he expected Lee to chime in, but rather hoped Lee would agree to fix the cue rather than chance having his name dragged through a negative thread for the world to see. This is my point of view, a cue maker who has spent over a decade dealing with this kind of crap from pool players. The OP asked for opinions & this is mine. Mine are based on experience & first hand knowledge.
What do you base your arguments on? How many cues like this have you been brought for repair? How many have you actually seen? And how many of those were due to anything but abuse or accident, honestly? If cue makers are not experts on cues, then who exactly would be? If another cue maker has another point of view & feels the break is due to something else, then I am open to hearing it. But for somebody out of the blue to just chime in with radical, imagined hypotheticals, i'm gonna have to believe it's just for the sake of argument more than anything. I don't know Lee. But I know cues, and I know the historical pattern of cause & affect with broken cues. There simply doesn't seem to be anything different with this situation than any other broken cue. The player broke the cue, whether accident or abuse, is sick about it and trying anything to recover his loss any way he can. My opinion, of course.