Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist, wins his defamation case

Climate scientist Michael Mann won his defamation lawsuit Thursday against both Rand Simberg, a former adjunct scientist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Mark Steyn, a National Review contributor.

The trial took observers back to 2012, the heyday of the blogosphere and an era of rancorous controversy over the existence of global warming, what psychology researcher and climate disinformation blogger John Cook called “a wild time.”

The six-member jury announced its unanimous verdict after a four-week trial in the District of Columbia Superior Court and a full day of deliberation. They found both Mr Simberg and Mr Steyn guilty of defaming Dr. Mann with multiple false statements and awarded the scientist $1 in damages from each writer.

The jury also found that the writers had made their statements with “malice, spite, ill will, revenge or deliberate intent to harm,” and ordered damages of $1,000 against Mr. Simberg and $1 million against Mr. Steyn to deter others from doing so. to stop doing the same.

In 2012, Mr Simberg and Mr Steyn had drawn parallels between the controversy over Dr. Mann and the scandal surrounding Jerry Sandusky, the former football coach of Pennsylvania State University, who was convicted of sexually abusing children. Dr. Mann was a professor at Penn State at the time.

“It is constitutionally intentionally difficult to win defamation lawsuits in cases involving matters of public interest and prominent public figures,” said RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah.

The two sides argued for days about the truth or falsity of the messages, with evidence shown including unflattering emails between Dr. Mann and colleagues, excerpts from studies by Penn State and the National Science Foundation that Dr. Mann acquitted of academic misconduct, and other scientists who testified that Dr. Mann had ruined their reputation, and a detailed but controversial criticism of his research methods by a statistician.

Both Mr. Simberg and Mr. Steyn testified that they sincerely believed in what they wrote.

“Defamatory does not equal defamatory,” Mr. Simberg's attorney, Victoria Weatherford, said in her closing statement. “Rand is just a man, just a blogger expressing his true opinion on a topic he believes is important. That is an uncomfortable truth for Michael Mann.”

Dr. Mann argued that the blog posts caused him to lose grants and that he was excluded from at least one research collaboration because his reputation suffered. The defendants argued that Dr.'s star Mann continued to claim that he is one of the most successful climate scientists working today.

The chairman, Alfred Irving, emphasized to the jury that it is not their job to decide whether or not there is global warming. “I knew we were walking a fine line from a climate change trial to a defamation trial,” he had said earlier when discussing which witnesses to allow.

The story of this lawsuit is not over yet.

In 2021, Judge Irving, joined by another DC Superior Court judge, decided that the Competitive Enterprise Institute and National Review could not be held liable. The publishers did not meet the bar of “actual malice” imposed on public figures suing for defamation, the judges ruled, meaning employees of the two organizations did not publish Mr. Simberg and Mr. Steyn's posts in Science that they were false, and they weren't. have “reckless disregard” for whether the messages were false.

The lawyers of Dr. Mann have indicated that they will appeal this earlier decision.