Mann-Steyn lawsuit judge inverts the defendants actions, botches ruling

sergeiMK says:
wuwt seems to be suggesting that mann has no case because all those fraud/cheat/incompetent claims were just for fun and have no truth behnd them.
It seems strange that you can call a professional a fraud so many times and with such force, then turn round and say it was just for fun.

It’s obvious that you’re not familiar with the case. Mann isn’t suing Steyn and National Review because they claimed that this work was fraudulent. Mann is suing them because they compared Penn State’s investigation of him to Penn State’s investigation of Jerry Sandusky by saying,

“Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.”

This is the part that defense attorneys are claiming is hyperbole.

In effect, if the ruling is allowed to stand, it would mean that by agreeing with someone 1 time today, you are now assumed to agree with that person all the time, and you thus become responsible for their past actions, as though you had agreed with them at the time.
In effect, unless you spoke out in the past against the person you now agree with, you can now be held legally responsible for all the past actions of the person you agree with today, even those actions you did not agree with, but did not speak out against.
In effect, you become legally responsible to condemn every action by everyone you do not agree with, otherwise if you happen at some point in the future to agree with them on 1 point, you them become liable for all actions by that party you did not speak up against.
this would place unreasonable burden on every person and party to speak out against every action by every other person or party that they did not agree with, even if they were not aware of the action.

It is all George Zimmermann’s fault.

Skipio Australis says:
July 29, 2013 at 11:58 pm
I’m not sure how it is in the US, but in Australia, truth is a complete defence to defamation….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If the Judge is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, it does not matter WHAT the facts are. That is why The Robing Room comments are important. This judge believes in the rule of man (political favoritism) and not in the Rule of Law. Too bad there is no way of removing dishonest judges. Judges are now, above the law. and our rights to a fair trial BY JURY has been compromised by the US Supreme Court.

“In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved….” ~ Amendment VII

Pretty darn clear isn’t it? But the Supreme Court didn’t think so.

Right to Jury in Civil Cases
Toward the end of the Constitutional Convention, Hugh Williamson of North Carolina noted that “no provision was yet made for juries in civil cases and suggested the necessity of it.”
….The Seventh Amendment, passed by the First Congress without debate, cured the omission by declaring that the right to a jury trial shall be preserved in common-law cases, thus leaving the traditional distinction between cases at law and those in equity or admiralty, where there normally was no jury. The implied distinction parallels the explicit division of federal judicial authority in Article III to cases (1) in law, (2) in equity, and (3) in admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. The contemporaneously passed Judiciary Act of 1789 similarly provided that “the trial of issues of fact, in the district courts, in all causes except civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, shall be by jury.” As Justice Joseph Story later explained in Parsons v. Bedford (1830): “In a just sense, the amendment then may well be construed to embrace all suits which are not of equity and admiralty jurisdiction, whatever may be the peculiar form which they may assume to settle legal rights.”
The Supreme Court has, however, arrived at a more limited interpretation. It applies the amendment’s guarantee to the kinds of cases that “existed under the English common law when the amendment was adopted,” Baltimore & Carolina Line v. Redman (1935), or to newly developed rights that can be analogized to what existed at that time, Luria v. United States (1913), Curtis v. Loether (1974). Accordingly, in a series of decisions in the second half of the twentieth century, the Supreme Court ruled that the Seventh Amendment guarantees the right to trial by jury in procedurally novel settings, like declaratory judgment actions, Beacon Theatres v. Westover (1959), and shareholder derivative suits, Ross v. Bernhard (1970). The Court also applied the amendment to cases adjudicating newly created statutory rights, Curtis v. Loether, Pernell v. Southall Realty (1974). In addition, the Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that when factually overlapping “legal” and “equitable” claims are joined together in the same action, the Seventh Amendment requires that the former be adjudicated first (by a jury); and that when legal claims triable to a jury are erroneously dismissed, relitigation of the entire action is “essential to vindicating [the plaintiff’s] Seventh Amendment rights.” Lytle v. Household Manufacturing, Inc. (1990).
The right to trial by jury is not constitutionally guaranteed in certain classes of civil cases that are concededly “suits at common law,” particularly when “public” or governmental rights are at issue and if one cannot find eighteenth-century precedent for jury participation in those cases. Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety & Health Review Commission (1977). Thus, Congress can lodge personal and property claims against the United States in non-Article III courts with no jury component. In addition, where practice as it existed in 1791 “provides no clear answer,” the rule is that “[o]nly those incidents which are regarded as fundamental, as inherent in and of the essence of the system of trial by jury, are placed beyond the reach of the legislature.” Markman v. Westview Instruments (1996). In those situations, too, the Seventh Amendment does not restrain congressional choice….

So there went our last constraint on the Federal government. Without a trial by jury we lost our RIGHT to overrule corrupt judges and idiotic laws and regulations.