Article rejected due to similar passage in published source

[EmilyRB]

I recently submitted an article titled What Is Public Relations?, to fill a public request. I just received an email informing me that the article has been rejected and purged because 'This article has a passage that is similar to another published source. We cannot accept it'. I am going to assume that the passage referred is 'Public relations focuses on promoting a company, product or individual in order to gain exposure in the media, build a brand, create awareness, and increase credibility'. The customer who requested this article included this quote in her specification. The quote is published on her website, but I took its inclusion in the request details to mean that she wanted those words in the article, so I included them in the introduction.

Is there anything that can be done about this, or is the article gone forever? Will this be a black mark against my name on the CC site now? I was not making any attempt at plagiarism, rather trying to write an article that the customer would be happy with.