IANAL, but yes, I believe it can nullify the claim. Bumping into someone on the sidewalk is only battery if the prosecution demonstrates intent to harm.
1. Said "consumer" is effectively hoarding Supply, and thus distorting the Market.
2. Said "consumer" has no effective means to either Deploy nor Utilize said products as neither the Data Centers nor the Energy required to power them are in existence.
3. Said "consumer" has articulated his belief that the Taxpayer should "backstop" his endeavors in some capacity, as well.
If you don't find this offensive in the least and possibly criminal at worst, then I don't understand your thought process.
While it's certainly worthwhile to discuss the Technical and Procedural elements that contributed to this Service Outage, the far more important (and mutually-exclusive aspect) to discuss should be:
Why have we built / permitted the building of / Subscribed to such a Failure-intolerant "Network"?
Who's "we"? This is not a trick question, what specific people do you think acted wrongly here? I don't use Cloudflare personally. I don't run any of the sites that do use it. The people who did make the decision to put thier websites behind Cloudflare could stop, and maybe some will, but presumably they're paying for it because they think, perhaps accurately, that they get value out of it. Should some power compel them not to use Cloudflare?
"human programmers forget to account for edge cases"
Which is precisely the rationale which led to Standard Operating Procedures and Best Practices (much like any other Sector of business has developed).
I submit to you, respectfully, that a corporation shall never rise to a $75 Billion Market Cap without a bullet-proof adherence to such, and thus, this "event" should be properly characterized and viewed as a very suspicious anomaly, at the least
That's certainly not a universal Legal Standard. If I'm harmed, but you didn't "intend" to harm me, does that nullify my Claim?
Hardly.