'One random guy wins $850 in small claims court from AT&T' - you think that is newsworthy? I disagree. We wouldn't have been hearing about this had AT&T not tried to shut him up.
They will learn from this mistake. They just ran into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
The way to handle this if you are AT&T is to pay the $850 and then ignore anything else he does and wait for it to go away.