A federal judge in Mississippi last week threw out an $85 million defamation lawsuit brought by a politically connected corporation against a Virginia journalism non-profit. The procedural ruling drew little attention, and it could still be appealed. Even so, the dismissal represents a nice first-round victory for a news organization whose real crime was probably that it looked too closely at the business dealings of Virginia’s new Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

Before he ran for governor, McAuliffe was co-founder and chairman of GreenTech, a maker of “neighborhood electric vehicles” — golf-cart-sized two-seaters that max out at 35 miles per hour and sell for about $16,000. While campaigning for governor of Virginia in 2013, McAuliffe cited the company frequently as evidence of his business acumen.