Prince William FOIA case on global warming headed for Virginia Supreme Court
The fight by a conservative legal group and Del. Robert Marshall (R-Prince William) to obtain the e-mails written by leading climate change scientist Michael E. Mann while he was at the University of Virginia was shot down by a judge in Prince William County last year. But Marshall and the legal group appealed, and the Virginia Supreme Court has agreed to take the case and rule on whether the state’s Freedom of Information Act exempts unpublished academic research from being disclosed to the public, even after it’s been concluded or has been released elsewhere.
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Richard C. Kast and Madelyn F. Wessel, U.Va.’s lawyers, argued that Judge Sheridan got it right when he ruled that the university had properly interpreted FOIA. They acknowledged that there was no judicial precedent on the FOIA exemption, but that “the policy of open government under the act is not ‘absolute,’” citing more than 100 exemptions in Virginia’s FOIA law. They noted that the Institute and Marshall challenge the judge’s interpretation of “proprietary,” but that the conservatives “offer no alternative definition or explanation as to why the plain meaning of the term should not apply.” Plain meaning, in U.Va.’s view, being “a thing or property owned or in the possession of one who manages and controls them.”
Mann said in an e-mail to me [the WaPo writer] that “I believe Judge Sheridan’s ruling protecting faculty research correspondence is correct and is precisely what Sen. Thomas Michie intended when he proposed his legislation to amend Virginia’s FOIA law and the legislature enacted in 1984 to enhance the ability of Virginia’s public colleges and university’s to protect the scholarly research endeavor.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2013/10/09/prince-william-foia-case-on-global-warming-headed-for-virginia-supreme-court/
At this point an open admission of fraud in the emails would not astonish me.
Or else he’s leading everyone on a wild goose chase.
Good! I hope they do the right thing.
Since his paranoia makes him think that the lawsuit is funded with dirty Koch money it’s not like he thinks he’d benefit from draining their resources by keeping them entangled in the legal system. So scared of things to come to light is the most likely thing.
The NSA probably has dirt on them too.
…conservatives “offer no alternative definition or explanation as to why the plain meaning of the term (proprietary) should not apply.”
It should not apply because public tax dollars paid for everything: Mann’s computer, the University of Virginia’s servers, and the University of Virginia as well. They also paid Mann’s salary and the salaries other climastrologists who very likely have perpetuated a decades long fraud on taxpayers around the world.
This is precisely the kind of activity FOIA laws were enacted to protect taxpayers against.
Two Stanford profs rated the VA Supreme Court as “18th most conservative”, which would if accurate put it in the top of the middle third of state SCs (1-17, 18-33, 34-50).
http://judgepedia.org/index.php/Supreme_Court_of_Virginia
Not sure if protecting emails of a public employee as protected privacy & freedom of speech vs. the people’s right to know what their workers are up to is a conservative or liberal issue, however. Hard to keep personal opinions about CACA out of the decision matrix, however, IMO.
It appears that “freedom of information” is just another Orwellian Newspeak term given the constant losing battle for the people to see what they have purchased with their tax dollars. It’s pathetic and sad how far this case this has gone. Shame on the university, shame on Mann shame on the court. They show nothing but contempt when they treat tax payers as indentured labour and slaves without rights.
The reasons he does not want the emails exposed must be one of more of the following:
1. They are full of obviousy bad science which he discusses with his pals (as in reviewers).
2. They reveal him as the vindictive, petty little **** that he is.
3. He is swapping porn with his pals.
There cannot be anything in these emails of commercial or strategic value, so why should he have any reason to hide them unless it is one or more of the above?
If his immature behavior on Twitter is anything to go by, his emails which he thinks are private must be a treasure trove of BS [bad science]
If there’s nothing to hide, release it voluntarily. That would go a long way toward restoring whatever credibility Mann has left.
If he was trying to protect a patent on the hockey sticks or CO2…but he’s not. All this legal finagling sounds like Lois Lerner pleading the fifth after stating she was innocent.
I guess that part of his problem is that he is not sure want are in the e-mails in the first place . So cannot afford to take the risk of people seeing any ‘dirty launder’ he may have left behind .
That he is a nasty little so and so and is disliked by many on his own side , does suggest that there will at least lots of personnel stuff in there , that he rather others did not see. So If it does come out its full of bad science too , and with Mann is there another type , is will be a bonus.
I’m not holding my breath. The outcome won’t be good for anyone other than Mann.
I currently work with a lot of “proprietary” information. The definition we use reflects the OSHA definition of “Trade Secret”: any confidential formula, pattern, process, device, information, or compilation of information used in a business that gives the business an advantage over competitors who do not know or use it. [29 CFR 1900.1200, Appendix D]
Since Mann’s work was funded by the People of the Commonwealth of Virginia rather than a business (so the Commonwealth ‘owns’ the work and the information), and there are no relevant ‘competitors’ in ‘climate science’, it is a mystery to me how the products of his work at UVA can be considered ‘proprietary.’
The money that paid for everything was spent in order for the professor to do research and any emails that concern that researchcannot possib ly have been intended to be interpreted as “private correspondance.” Personal privacy has no place in scientific research, since the research is obviously not intended to be someone’s private property.
Mardler:
At October 9, 2013 at 11:55 am you say
OK, I will bite.
Dr Mann is going to extreme lengths to avoid complying with a FOIA request for him to release the contents of the emails. If the emails contain information which would benefit him if disclosed then Dr Mann would be likely to disclose it. And if the emails contain nothing that Dr Mann wants to hide then he would be unlikely to be expending such large amounts of time, money and effort in trying to hide it.
There are only two possible outcomes. Either Dr Mann will be forced to comply with the FOIA request for him to release the emails or it will be ruled that he need not so comply.
If he manages to avoid the FOIA request then he will have placed himself under the permanent suspicion that he has something he wants to hide. If he fails to avoid the FOIA request then he will have wasted all that time, money and effort whether or not he has anything to hide.
Hence, I do not understand how the outcome can only be good for Dr Mann. Please explain.
Richard
I think Mardler has the right of it. Don’t gloat and crow. Regardless of the type of case, the courts tend to view the position of the ‘state’ with deference. I have dealt with it many, many times as an expert witness on behalf of many clients. In such cases, the judges will hear compelling arguments from both sides and they tend to take the attitude: “The State (in this case the state university) has no particular stake in this, but the other side does. I will bias my opinion and lend more credence toward the side without a vested interest – i.e., the most dispassionate.”
It’s not a question of which side in fact DOES have a greater vested interest. I have seen courts rule pursuant to the government deference principal on cases I thought, naively at the time, were cut and dried on my side’s favor. ….. WRONG!!!
And if you think ad hominem attacks have been used outrageously so far, the other side’s argument in this case will try to make us all look like vindictive, anti-science, shills for industry to prejudice the judges into thinking we DO have a vested interest and the state doesn’t.
In brief – don’t count your chickens.
Can we take up a collection for NSA contractors and recently retired IRS operatives at this point?
“It should not apply because public tax dollars paid for everything”
This, and also the fact that his deliberations and his ‘scientific research’ have had – and continue to have – a direct effect on public policy worldwide.
It is therefore in everyone’s interest to see how his conclusions were arrived at (saving his own, clearly). There can be no property rights in publicly funded research which is used for international policy making
Bloke down the pub says:
October 9, 2013 at 10:35 am
Or else he’s leading everyone on a wild goose chase.
At the cost so far that has to be the goose that laid the golden email.
richardscourtney says:
October 9, 2013 at 12:14 pm
—-
Regarding Mardler
I took his post to mean that he doubts that the Virginia Supreme Court will rule that Mann’s emails are subject to FOIA and must be turned over.
BTW – as a follow up to my previous comment. Ask yourselves: If the courts ruled according to what WE in the public think is black and white, why are soooo many companies and insurers and municipalities so anxious to settle a claim out of court? It is because the rulings of the courts are VERY unpredictable and will turn on the smallest bit of evidence or clause in a law. I have represented many clients in the legal arena and have had relatively few actually go to court where I testified (still a bit, but relatively few), because BOTH sides would rather settle than risk an unfavorable ruling no matter how strong they think there case is.
In this instance, the case is going to be heard, but the outcome is anybody’s guess.
Mark Bofill: I also think that Mardler means that Mann will likely win, but that the court will insert some ambiguous clauses in its ruling which will cause the legislature to either tighten definitions or expand on exceptions or some such modification to the existing law. When a ruling causes legislatures to change laws, no-one benefits. It’s how we end up with convoluted laws which every person looks at and asks: How did we end up with THAT law?
No-one else will win because, as Jefferson stated: Government governs best, that governs least. Adding new clauses to existing laws to countervail court rulings results in governments governing more.
Tom,
Won’t catch me arguing against that. 🙂
I can’t speak to the rest of your post, except to say it sounds plausible to me, but I wouldn’t really know.
First and please correct me if I’m wrong here, Mann does not have a dog in this fight does he? Whilst the mails requested are from him the foi requests were always to his previous employer no? It’s they who continue to spend vast amounts of public money to avoid releasing information that belongs in the public domain if requested.
I don’t think Mann could release these mail even should he want to.
Second, how can anything in the mails be ‘proprietary’? It seems to me that the University feels that there is something in there which might have commercial value. After all of this time I doubt it however it also confuses me how public funded state schools can be allowed to be profit-minded.
My feeling is that this obfuscation and denial is likely sanctioned by people powerful enough to do so. The same people whose livelihood’s and reputations could be at stake were we to get a true look into the mind and method of Dr Mann. I don’t see how it could be otherwise or surely someone in public office, holding the purse strings, would balk at so much public money being spent defending against this action over a matter so seemingly trivial? I’m sure this will be allowed to go on until there is no more will or funds for Marshall and the Institute to continue.