There are always some bad facts to deal with. A typical situation is where the domain registrant took the domain name down or engaged in other behavior that could be construed as an admission. Normally, one deals with those sorts of things by saying that, yep, the domain registrant was intimidated, misinformed, acting without counsel, etc..
The unspoken factor in a lot of domain disputes is the degree of distinctiveness of the alleged mark. In, for example, a case I'm dealing with now and which will go to decision in a few weeks if the complainant doesn't withdraw, the utter lack of a trade or service mark in what is a commonly used phrase is going to be such a strong factor that none of the facts about the parties' prior dealings and communications is going to matter.
In a situation like this one, it's natural to ask, "If the guy was going to go ahead anyway, then why did he ask permission?" There could be a lot of answers to that question, and you'd want to take a look at the exact communication, but some flavor of "Who cares?" might be appropriate in this instance.