> 48 hours after payload separation, long after its responsibilities for the launch had ended

This is funny, the way things are just discarded in space, not our problem anymore vs. deorbit

I think this is more that the offending satellite was at that point the responsibility of the satellite operator, not the launch operator.

I think they are saying "this is not on us, this is on the sat operator". Which may or may not be true, who knows.

If you get hit by a car 5 minutes after you get let off at a bus stop it isn't the bus drivers fault.