From Mark Steyn:
Breaking news in the Mann vs Steyn global-warming hockey-stick case! Santa has come early and left a lump of coal in my stocking:
Almost three years ago, my sometime colleagues at National Review and my co-defendants at the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed an interlocutory appeal to determine, inter alia, whether the new anti-SLAPP law was interlocutorily appealable. Fascinating stuff.
I was not a party to the appeal, mainly because I’d concluded – after spending the autumn of 2013 listening to two trial judges issuing competing rulings on the same case – that the DC courts were a proceduralist swamp and we might as well move straight to trial. That view of DC’s dysfunction was subsequently confirmed by the lethargy of the Court of Appeals. A month before the appeal’s third anniversary, the court has now issued a very belated ruling as a Christmas Eve news dump. You can read the full order here.
The takeaway is that Mann’s suit against National Review editor (and my old boss) Rich Lowry has been dismissed, but those against me and Rand Simberg will proceed:
Dr. Mann has supplied sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find, by a preponderance of the evidence, that statements in the articles written by Mr. Simberg and Mr. Steyn were false, defamatory, and published by appellants to third parties, and, by clear and convincing evidence, that appellants did so with actual malice.
You won’t be surprised to hear that I disagree with their ladyships. The “sufficient evidence” Dr Mann has supplied are a series of mendacious claims to have been “investigated” and “exonerated” by multiple Anglo-American bodies that did, in fact, do neither.
So I was right not to bother with this proceduralist bollocks: except for Rich Lowry, it was a complete three-year time-waster and we’re back to where we were in January 2014 when I was panting to go to trial. For a near-third-of-a-decade in the making, I do think this troika might have worked a little harder on their argument. For my part, I regard the support for the First Amendment from the ACLU, NBC, The Washington Post et al as more relevant to how this thing is likely to come down in the end – although we may be a few years getting there.
The purpose of the whole sclerotic racket of American jurisprudence is to obstruct up-and-down trials with a nice clean guilty/not-guilty final score, and instead bury the thing in proceduralist flimflammery only the experts can follow. Take, for example, this Tweet from Noah McCormack:
DC Circuit shoots down Mark Steyn and National Review’s SLAPP motion, climate scientist’s libel case can go to trial
Er, no. It wasn’t my motion. Nothing to do with me. In fact, I objected to it. As I said above, I thought the appeal was a waste of time, and filed a motion to proceed to trial three years ago. Mann filed a motion objecting to that, a position the judge found “ironic“. Very droll, I’m sure.
In a third of the time it took the DC Court of Appeals to issue their ruling, I managed to write an entire book on the subject (dealing in part with all those faux exonerations): “A Disgrace To The Profession”: The World’s Scientists – In Their Own Words – On Michael E Mann, His Hockey Stick, And Their Damage To Science – Volume One. If you’re looking for a last-minute Christmas present, well, I could do with an uptick in royalties – and this tome certainly has its admirers:
The first thing you see when you walk in the office is Mark Steyn’s book about Michael Mann.
More: http://www.steynonline.com/7643/walking-in-a-legal-wonderland
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Piltdown Mann won’t you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight.
============
Frolic with the friends of the court and dance in the light of your doom.
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+1
Remember during the week before the election, when Donald Trump couldn’t possibly win? But he didn’t ever believe that, so he kept fighting right up to the end… when he won the election.
I guess it’s time to buy another Mark Steyn book. I like a fighter.
Excellent book! Mark really did his research and there are some marvelous quotes from an entire range of people, including some who are Mann colleagues! Great cartoons of the Mann creature by Josh too!
“Excellent book!” I will second that.
The shear number of less than favourable quotations about Mann from other scientists is quite mind-blowing.
I particularly liked the idea that this book was only “Volume 1”. 🙂
graphic;
sheer number
Brian, depends on whether you think Mann is about to get sheared.
good idea – any Steyn book will do the job – headed to Amazon right now
Interesting that you side with both Trump and Steyn, because Trump wants to make it very easy for people to be sued for writing, just like Steyn is suffering through right now..
Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention! Ha ha ha
Frank Zappa is The Mothers of Invention
Ah, but brown shoes don’t make it.
Necessity is a mother!!!
Is truth considered malice by the DC Court?
I know that many consider “truth” to be proof against judgement, but I seem to recall a case in the British courts where a doctor sued someone for libel or slander on the grounds that they had damaged his “good name” and apparently won. Technically. I believe the jury awarded him £1. Keep in mind that the precedents of British Common Law up to 1776 apply in the US, unless directly contravened by legislation.
That sounds like the novel _QB VII_ by Leon Uris. The libel suit was a pyhrric victory, Mann should read the book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QB_VII
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dering_v_Uris
The novel QB VII was loosely based on a real-life libel suit against Leon Uris.
The rich and powerful in Britain are in a much better position to shut down free speech.
The U.S. has the Libel Terrorism Protection Act (also known as Rachel’s Law).
It looks like the congress critters still place some value on free speech.
Libel, defamation, and slander laws in America, I believe, have been completely codified in law since 1776, and in any case are subject to the First Amendment. The British and American systems are so different now that American courts will not enforce British judgments without a trial or at least a review by an American court.
The unwillingness of American courts to enforce most British libel judgments is a new thing, created by the SPEECH Act, probably the best thing that President Obama signed into law during his tenure. The law applies to cases from any country that does not have certain free-speech protections that Americans get.
But in my view even US libel law unjustly favors plaintiffs too much. See Carol Burnett v. National Enquirer.
Whistler v Ruskin
http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/Landry.htm
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/turner-whistler-monet/who-what-when/ruskin-v-whistler
Whistler won but was awarded a farthing (1/4 penny or 1/960 pound) in damages and no costs which ruined him.
The most memorable exchange;
Sir John Holker barrister for Ruskin to Whistler; “You ask 200 guineas (£210) for the work of two days?
Whistler replied, “No. I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime.”
(The cry of every professional man down the ages!)
In the US, the PLAINTIFF suing the defendant for libel (that the defendant has libeled the plaintiff), must show by a preponderance of the evidence that what the defendant published was untrue, incorrect, and damaged the plaintiff’s reputation. If the plaintiff is a public figure, he must also prove that the untruths were published with malice or with such reckless disregard of the truth as to be malice (See the movie “Absence of Malice for an entertaining but pretty accurate depiction of this, Paul Newman, Sally fields) The defendant need only show good faith belief in the truth, or, simple mistake.
In UK, historically, the DEFENDANT sued for libel must prove that what he published was in fact true. And in most cases that can be nearly impossible to do.
Libel laws in Britain and the US are different.
In the US, the truth is an absolute defense against libel. If what you are saying is true, it doesn’t matter that it damages the defendants reputation.
With Obama’s Dept. of Justice, truth is considered to be malice, racist, colluding with the Russians, and the reason snowflakes will have a life of hopelessness.
I can’t wait to shower all those people with mountains of truth.
“Defamation—also calumny, vilification, and traducement—is the communication of a false statement that harms the reputation of an individual person.”
The communication of a *false* statement. Telling the truth about a person’s credit card history is not defamation.
Forrest Gardener and TA,
I don’t know what lawyers call it, but I do know that merchants no longer post bounced checks by their cash registers like they used to. Same principle, I think: the merchant is risking legal action if he tries to show that a particular customer is a deadbeat.
Truth, nor the law, matter in the DC Court. Only the politics of the judges involved matter. They rule as their ideology requires.
Mostly for dbstealey: It is actually worse now. I suffered a layoff when one of the paper machines
at a mill I worked for was shut down. I got one of the most glowing references I had ever heard
of. I ended up being hired back, at least for a few years before the entire mill was shut-down.
They did everything they could to ease our transition, but they did NOT issue any references.
When I asked why, they said that it was out of fear that if a company hired a former worker
and he did not live up to the references the old company gave him, they could be sued.
Apparently some such civil cases were actually filed, leading them to impose this policy.
We had a engineer go bat-crap raging crazy with a shift manager. The following morning, he was
escorted to his office, then off the premises by a security guard. This guy was an MS in mechanical
engineering (At least on paper.) All the book smarts in the world, but he could not engineer his
way out of a 4 pound paper bag. If they are afraid of being sued by a company, imagine how
afraid they would be to give the guy bad references. The Al Bundy wall of shame at the super-
market is bad enough, but if one cannot even give an employee good references, we have become
far too litigious as a society.
Leonard Jones,
Thanks for that, and I agree 100%. Too many lawsuits.
Now employers will usually answer just one question: ‘Would you hire that employee again?’
No reasons are provided, either pro or con. But the message is received either way. Unfortunately, that gives the person answering the question too much power.
This means your countersuit also goes to trial, right?
When in doubt — do nothing.
Anything else can be damaging to your career up the judgeship ladder.
Divergence of opinion is malice? Opinion and “puff”, even if it happens to be untrue, is legally sanctioned in contracts and certainly the First Amendment. The”appellants to third parties” is the key to the legal opinion justifying the trial. Your opinion happens to be correct. This fact nullifies both any malicious interest of the third parties and any claim against you.
Courage, you got this.
“Divergence of opinion is malice?”
Surely when one is $avingThePlanet™ all opposition to one’s agenda must be eradicated because The Very Survival Of Humanity Is At Stake.
“Get out of my way and give me all the money, I’m $avingThePlanet!”
Saving the planet from humanity has nothing to do with The Very Survival Of Humanity.
Yeah, but there’s a lot of conflation (and misdirection, evasion, derailing, misrepresentation, wild exaggeration, fear-mongering, etc.) going on.
Would it be out of order of me to remind readers that they can help Steyn with the costs of this legal process by buying vouchers on his website, which they can use to buy his books, etc – or indeed pay for vouchers and not cash them in?
For the courts, Jaundyce vs Jaundyce is the goal. Bastards.
Jarndyce vs Jarndyce, Shirley?
Jarndyce versus Jarndyce refers to a legal case about a contested inheritance in the novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens. The lawyers stretched the case out for so many years that all the money was spent on legal fees.
Probably based on a real case, the dispute over the will of the “Acton Miser” William Jennens. Jennens v Jennens commenced in 1798 and was abandoned in 1915 (117 years later) when the legal fees had exhausted the Jennens estate of funds.
‘It’s nice work if you can get it
And if you get it, won’t you tell me how?’
In English civil law there is no ‘s’ after the ‘v’ and cases are spoken of as “A and B” not “A versus B”, so the case above would have been called Jennens and Jennens in the English courts.
“The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it.”
Good one, Noonan!
Good one, Charles Dickens.
Since I was old enough to read a legal argument, I have had total unmitigated contempt for judges, lawyers, and the entire “legal system”.
Now that I am well into my dotage, I can confidently and assuredy say that my opinion of a lifetime is well founded and irrefutable.
The entire Mann saga is little more than an additional steaming pat on top of the already huge pile.
Mark Twain was right when he made his suggestion regarding the disposition of lawyers.
Jonathan Swift on lawyers of his day: “ … my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will …” (Gulliver’s Travels); not a bad description of many nowadays I think.
Judges he thought were “…picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy …”.
William
I checked Mark Twain’s remarks on lawyers and couldn’t find any on their disposition, Perhaps you are referring to Shakespeare’s suggestion in his play “Henry VI”.
Twain was however not complimentary:
http://www.twainquotes.com/Lawyer.html
Yes, Dick the Butcher says in Henry VI, Part II, Act IV, Scene II, Line 73: ”The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Dick was a follower of the rebel Jack Cade, who thought that if he disturbed law and order, he could become king. Not an unreasonable ambition during the chaotic, bloody dynastic Wars of the Roses, in which the onset of the Little Ice Age played a part.
I believe Twain is saying more about publishers than lawyers.
Old :
Thanks for your correction; you are most probably right.
I fear that in my dotage, my index of quotables is blending into porridge.
Sigh………!
Shakespeare…….” KILL ALL THE LAWYERS”.
Remember Mann has a similar suit against Dr. Tim Ball in Victoria next February. Question: which CAGW alarming deep pockets are funding these suits? Mann’s loss would be a dagger in the heart of this scientific hoax.
Let’s hope “hide the decline” Mann goes down in flames.
“Mann’s loss would be a dagger in the heart of this scientific hoax.”
That may be why the DC court is dragging this out.
One would like to think so.
I hate to rain on that parade but I recall the same thing being said about Climategate . . six years ago and counting.
I think they stalled too long. The incoming administration will be circling his rear flank quickly as he battles old enemies at the front.
Most assuredly!
“Question: which CAGW alarming deep pockets are funding these suits?”
It would be an interesting move if, say, the government were to finance Mark on the basis that the truth needed to be discovered and widely disseminated and should not be hindered or distorted by lack of funds.
I suspect Mann’s federal research grant funding my face severe headwinds in the coming years.
At this point, fakers like Mann need to crawl into their holes, hide for the next 4 years, and pray that a Dimocrat is elected President in 2020.
But it won’t happen, unless Trump proves to be a total failure and I doubt it. Look for 8 years of Trump followed by 8 years of Pence.
By then, Mann’s “science” will be completely discredited and unfunded. Thankfully!
16 years in the wilderness for Progtards would be great. But that has not happened in the 100 years since Woodrow Wilson, the US’s first real Progtard.
Well faced with unprecedented climate change a little unprecedented Republican possession of he throne would be apposite.
“But that has not happened in the 100 years since Woodrow Wilson, the US’s first real Progtard.”
They haven’t had real opposition since Wilson. Reagan was the closest, and Bush would have got eight years if he hadn’t been such a Cuck.
The Elder Bush might have eight years but for Perot, who cut a corrupt deal with Clinton to torpedo Bush in return for his software company getting Hillary Care health system contracts.
But the Bushies looked down on Reagan WH staff and their conservative agenda. It was the same internecine divide in the GOP as in 1964, ie the corporate Eastern Establishment (Rockefeller) vs. the Midwestern and Western populist wing (Goldwater) of the party.
I suggest Stein challenge Mann to a winner takes all Karaoke contest.
Steyn.
By his own admission, this is a skill at which Marc does not excel, unless he’s just being overly self-deprecating.
“Hide the Decline” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMqc7PCJ-nc ;
Science vs. law? Both sides are ill equipped to challenge the other nor should they be. One is based on empirical evidence and the other on consensus.
This is climate “science” we’re talking about here. Not to be confused with actual science.
Never a truer word, spoken in jest.
There are reliable disciplines that can assist in judgments: history training in weighing up evidence, logic, and artificial intelligence. Sadly, judges are not skilled in these disciplines. Most are refugees from science and maths at school level. Nor are they in contact with the common sense possessed by communities. Witness the “ho hum” exhibited by most people when the warmists rant on. The AGW believers may be right. They have convinced most politicians, but the science of climate is certainly not settled.
In my country (NZ) the laws of defamation were greatly minimized a few years ago, thus reducing the gravy train of litigation. Politicians used to get rich by suing reporters and publishers. The aim now is “let open and free debate settle the issue”.
The Noah McCormack link is not working. Coincidence?
I have great sympathy for Mark Steyn. The foulest curse is “May you be in the right in a legal case”.
Hi HO! Hi HO! It’s off to court we go! (Whistling)
Can’t wait, to see, the full “discovery”! (Whistling)
When Steyn’s defense, asks Mann for evidence..
(Whistling)
Sorry that the delay was such a waste Mark, but now the fun can begin!
Chin up!
If you need a good laugh, check out the illiterate 1-star reviews of Steyn’s book about Mann on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/22A-Disgrace-Profession-22-Steyn-editor/product-reviews/0986398330/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewopt_rvwer?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&reviewerType=avp_only_reviews&showViewpoints=0&pageNumber=1
One of the reviewers actually said: “Misleading title. Should’ve said it was about Hockey Stick analysis.” Apparently the person was able to do the review without noticing the picture of a hockey stick on the front cover and the mention of the same in the subtitle. With that kind of demonstrated acuity, perhaps he or she is well-suited for a career in climate science?
It’s actually depressing how many reviews on Amazon are by people who never read the book. Or in this case, apparently never even saw the cover to the book.
I’m going to wait for the movie.
Mark Steyn is not appealling .. but Michael (“Mann-made warming”) Mann is even less appealing.
Stein managed to write a book full of character witnesses during this time.
All he needs to plea now is “substantial truth” and hand the book to the judges.
That would be true if you had an honest judge. Where the heck would you find one?
Yeah OBUMMER appointed 3000.
How about a motion for a change of venue to SW PA, just south of Penn State, where Trump racked up wins among coal miners?
More accurately, SW of Centre County for bituminous coal and east for anthracite.
Hang in there Mark, all those of us that have endured & yet prevailed, at the hands of vexacious and bad faith litigants, will empathise with what you are going through.
Have a wonderful christmas and keep up the good work, SOme entertaining comments from obviously worried Alarmists here http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/04/version-6-0-of-the-uah-temperature-dataset-released-new-lt-trend-0-11-cdecade/
The irony is that Mann had his best chance of winning during the peak of the El Nino at the beginning of this year. And he’s no chance of winning during a la nina with Trump as president.
Really, you think the judge will be looking out the window at the temperature? I for one am really looking forward to how this plays out. Glad it is carrying on.
Well, I hope that Mr. Steyn will be keeping an eagle eye on the thermostats in the trial court. Bad con artists tend to repeat their old games, and CAGWers are bad con artists.
The appeal courts conclusion said, inter alia:
“Dr. Mann has supplied sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find, by a preponderance of the evidence, that statements in the articles written by Mr. Simberg and Mr. Steyn were false, defamatory, and published by appellants to third parties, and, by clear and convincing evidence, that appellants did so with actual malice.”
They didn’t say anything about the weather.
We don’t need juries. A court determines what a reasonable jury must find.
Curious George said:
“We don’t need juries. A court determines what a reasonable jury must find.”
It isn’t as simple and universal as that, as I’m sure you already know.
Anyway, in this case what the Judge has decided is that there is sufficient evidence for a jury to be able to make a decision on the issue. Not that they have to find him guilty.
Mr. Stokes: Are you sure? Did I see it was 111 pg decision? If it can be reduced to one sentence, what did they go on about? They might have snuck in a page or two on the weather, who would notice? So now Mann gets a discovery deadline, will he be showing the evidence of this falsity? Or will he try to delay that?
Court is court so act accordingly. Be prepared and crush that sniveling weasel for me MY FRIEND.
Can some one tell me if this article duplicates Murray Salby’s work and crushes CAGW for good?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257343053_The_phase_relation_between_atmospheric_carbon_dioxide_and_global_temperature?enrichId=rgreq-9cd45871f5c4b32573881229a9638562-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI1NzM0MzA1MztBUzozMzg4NzQyODM5MDUwMjRAMTQ1NzgwNTMzMzYyOA%3D%3D&el=1_x_2&_esc=publicationCoverPdf
It doesn’t matter if science crushes the CAGW meme.
That has happened many times already.
Its got NOTHING to do with science.
No I can’t, but I can tell you it’s off topic.
Aiui, Mann didn’t actually want a trial, but he’s managed to lie himself into one.