The complete filing is posted here.
Another fantastic filing by Steyn’s attorneys. It’s filled with goodies. This is one of my favorites.
MANN’S MERITLESS BUT USEFUL MOTION
Rare is the motion that is at the same time both meritless and useful. Plaintiff Michael Mann’s motion to strike, for example, is just meritless: it is seven years too late. But his motion for partial summary judgment is one of the rare ones. It is meritless in that it applies the wrong law to imaginary facts. It is useful, however, in demonstrating why Defendant Mark Steyn, not Mann, should prevail on summary judgment and end this case’s eight-year-old damper on free expression on matters of public importance.
Mann’s motion for partial summary judgment is the mirror image of Steyn’s own already-filed motion for summary judgment on his defense of truth.
Steyn’s motion explains why the challenged statements in his post are true. Mann’s motion, in contrast, tries, but fails, to show they are false. Of those two dueling motions, only Steyn’s should prevail. Mann’s motion for summary judgment on falsity should be denied for the same reasons Steyn’s motion for truth should be granted.
And still on the first page.
Mann’s motion to strike Steyn’s defense of truth is seven years too late. Steyn answered Mann’s Amended Complaint on March 12, 2014, asserting as his Second Affirmative Defense that “[t]he statements at issue made by Defendant Steyn are true.” Williams Decl. Ex. 59 (Steyn’s Amended Answer and Counterclaims) ¶ 115. Superior Court Rule 12(f) requires a motion to strike to be filed “within 21 days” of the pleading it is addressed to, or on April 2, 2014. Mann filed his motion to strike on January 22, 2021. ED301J00214371
The filing is detailed and descriptive. Laying out the case clearly and logically.
Mann’s Climate War: Curry details how Mann has been “instrumental in the downward spiral of the climate science discourse” by withholding data from scientists who are critical of his statistical modeling, stifling criticism within the IPCC, distorting the peer review process, and leveling relentless personal attacks against anyone who dares to disagree with him. Steyn SJ Ex. TT (Curry Report) at 34. These attacks are “misconduct” because they violate fundamental norms of scientific discourse. Id. 16
During the Penn State investigation, Dean Henry Foley found Mann’s vitriolic “nasty” emails about his critics such misconduct as to be “worthy of censure.” ¶¶ 123, 144. “[T]hey were emails that you would not expect from people who are high minded and scientifically inclined.”
The conclusion is a forceful assertion of the truth defense, for statements both real and imaginary.
We have shown here, and in Steyn’s affirmative motion for summary judgment, that the three allegedly defamatory statements in paragraph 28 of the Amended Complaint are true. We have demonstrated that the three new “statements” Mann has concocted and tried to attribute to Steyn are also true.
Mann’s motion should in all respects be denied.
Let’s hope Steyn not only gets a summary judgement, but is awarded all legal expenses as well. The accumulated legal expenses in this farce have got to be substantial. How can Mikey Mann continue in the good graces of the Penn State ethics committee? Oh, he is singing their song so no pasa nada.
Its better. Steyn has countersued for $10 million in defamatory damages because of what Mann’s amended complaint falsely claimed about Steyn. Steyn will win that, methinks. It is still there, pending resolution of this.
And don’t forget that Mann had to amend his complaint because it falsely claimed he was a recipient of the Nobel prize that went jointly to IPCC and Gore.
and Steyn has already gotten his psychological revenge by publishing his book of others negative comments about Mann, “volume one”.
addendum. Steyn’s compendium book of others opinions of Mann is titled “A Disgrace to the Profession”, which a direct quote from one of the opinions. The irony is Mann cannot sue Steyn over the book, as none of the opinions are his, but rather Mann’s climate science colleagues.
And not just a couple of scientists with negative opinions of Mann, but dozens. It was a brilliant jujitsu move.
Mark should save some time and simply file for a Perpetual Motion
Absolutely you can be sued for publishing quotes from others, or causing them to be published, or being the directing mind behind their publication. Who propagates defamation is guilty of defamation, even if they were not the originator.
Not in the US. Sorry, wrong—and Manns suit is only US.
Plus evidence—Mann did not sue about Steyn’s book.
And it is long past the one-year limit to file against Steyn’s book, so Mickey is SOL here.
Mr. I: I think Steyn’s counterclaim was quietly tossed some time ago, but I have not found that on the docket.
Still going https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/01/24/mark-steyn-files-an-eviscerating-motion-for-summary-judgement-in-the-michael-mann-libel-suit/
Has- that was a motion for summary judgment to toss Mann’s claim. Steyn’s $10m counter claim was thrown out a few years ago
the $10m counter claim has been thrown out
Got a link to back that up Joe? Last I heard Mann had filed an anti-Slapp motion to dismiss it, but, like everything else involving this case, it’s still in the bowels of the courts awaiting a ruling that never seems to come.
Filing a motion isn’t the same thing as getting something thrown out. That court has to actually make a ruling (and that ruling then has to survive the inevitable appeals).
Offtopic, but Dr. Roy found that January and February were unusually cool in the SH:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2021/03/uah-global-temperature-update-for-february-2021-0-20-deg-c/
Which we’ve both noted to be the case for Chile and Argentina.
Really Chile was chilly eh.
Chile is seldom really chilly, except for the part of Antarctica it claims, but yeah, unusually cool, wet and windy last winter and even days this summer.
What about the Altaplana?
Chile today, hot tamale!
Can I get canceled for that?
Only if you are a food critic.
Ingram’s Foods which used to be in East Oakland, CA made a brand of tamales called Red’s Tamales. For many years they ran an a radio ad campaign the slogan of which was “Remember, Tuesday is Red’s Tamale Day.”
The funny part is that the name “Chile” comes from the fact that it was a chilly place.
There is a reason I live in the tropical Northern part of Australia; my friends down south are calling it “the year without a summer”.
Pretty much sums up our year in Melbourne. Given our socialist Premier’s penchant for public lockdown for ridiculous durations of our whole state of Victoria after just a couple of cases that escaped from his incompetent international traveller Hotel Quarantine you could say 2020 was a leap year – a frigid time warp jump from 2019 to 2021.
I can attest to that. I’m yet to process my first batch of tomatoes and is already March. In a normal year I’d be doing jars of them in Jan. Last year I started in Feb, this year I’ll start on Sunday. Not a good year for tomatoes at all. Plenty of green fruit but there’s no heat to ripen them. I even have the fire going today.
Put a pullover on!
I am thinking of using up our rainwater tank that I hold as a fire emergency. Very green and not much to burn in SE Melbourne. Been here 22 years and it is the lushest summer I have seen but not much rain in February.
Mann will not pay his legal expenses, he hasn’t for the last case he lost for his hockey trick, he is just free rolling his critic’s.
Dr. Ball still hasn’t seen a penny of court cost $$$ from Dr. Mann, which makes me wonder he will also do the same with Steyn when the lawsuit ends.
Mark Steyn is in the USA. Steyn can file for seizing manniacal’s assets, financial and physical.
Court can force manniacal into debt to pay where mannical’s assets do not cover Steyn’s settlement.
Mannical’s refusal to pay Ball can and likely will be used against manniacal in court. Manniacal, the jerk is unreliable and dishonest on every level.
Agree but never forget the DC District and Circuit courts are packed with political judges. Even judges appointed by Republican Presidents to the DC are likely to be just as radical as Judge E. Sullivan. Especially the DC District where media pressure and lobbyists swarm. Judge Irving is not an Article III Judge- his term ends in 2023.
One should not be surprised if he simply continues the case for another two years. He was appointed in 2008.
And you can decide if Irving has potential bias in this case from reading his bio:
1…. since 1993, has worked as a trial attorney in several Department of Justice divisions. Since 2001, Mr. Irving was employed in the Environment & Natural Resources Division, Environmental Enforcement Section, where he prosecuted corporations and individuals for violation of federal environmental laws.
2…In 2005, the Department of Justice granted Mr. Irving Special Commendation for Outstanding Service and in that same year, the Environmental Protection Agency awarded Mr. Irving a Bronze Medal for Commendable Service.
So, is he a Swamp judge? Fifteen years as a Swamp employee pushing the greenie and progressive laws prior to “moving on” to by a DC trial judge who just happened to be assigned a greenie case? But of course he’s impartial…
You really wonder to what level Mann has to sink before his employers, Penn State, drop him.
…or send him to the showers.
Maybe he was there as a child.
So long as those showers are in the penitentiary.
He is still pulling in the CACA grants. The academy is now all about grants, pull in 6 or 7 figures every couple of years and you could shoot the provost at a faculty meeting and nothing would happen as far as the school was concerned.
Universities have no standards these days, so it is not at all surprising that Mann remains employed.
As long as Mann can bring in the grants, Penn State will keep him.
put another way: “follow the money”
Mann, Simon, Nick, loydo, Griff …a cast of decepticons. Obfuscation is their game 🙁
I’ve never seen griff try obfuscation. Straight out lying is his forte. He’s not smart enough for anything more sophisticated.
Ouch! That’s gotta hurt.
Michael Mann, self-proclaimed “Nobel Laureate” responds, “Please, sir, may I have another?”
I wince when I read articles like this.
I am reminded of the NFL kicker lining up for a 40 yard field goal while the play by play or color commentator are saying “This guy is mister automatic inside of 50 yards. He never misses” then watch as ‘Mr. Automatic’ hooks the ball wide left.
A statement of filing would serve to inform and then, why not wait until the verdict is in, sans over-confident predictions?
Who is making predictions? I said it was a fantastic filing.
Level headed people know a sale isn’t made until the check clears.
9/10th of the sale is made when they walk out the door with the stuff.
It’s still not a sale, it’s a gift … until you’ve got their cash.
People who have never run a business don’t appreciate this concept.
Finance Manager to Salesperson: “this customer hasn’t paid her account”
Salesperson: “but she seemed so nice”
How many times has this conversation taken place?
How many more times does it have to take place before it sinks in that –
Next to no cash or cheques in Victoria, Australia – just cards for about a year now. Cash is slowly coming back up a little but cheques set to disappear. The limit for PINless exchange was lifted to $200 soon after Covid arrived so the vast majority of exchanges avoid contact.
Fact checking a metaphor will definitely get you laid at parties.
That’s a fact worth checking.
That’s a fact; worth checking.
Not in Portland…
I followed Groklaw when it was active. If I learned one thing it was that even lawyers had trouble predicting what judges would do.
The cases covered by Groklaw were similar to Dr. Mann’s lawsuits against Ball and Steyn. They were meritless but still managed to stay before the courts for an unconscionable amount of time.
At least half the problem with predictions are judges who are a law unto themselves.
Judges are reluctant to kill law suits, out of respect to lawyers.
The longer a case stays before the courts, the more the lawyers make.
The biggest donors to judges re-election campaigns, are lawyers.
“Sans”, using that word lost you half the audience.
Then comes “over-confident”.
It is fun pushing buttons, but eloquence will win the day.
You have failed to understand the game being played. Every time Mann’s “team” of interested financial supporters gets their incredibly expensive lawyers to file one more obviously churlish delaying tactic, Mann’s opponents (and the rest of us) win. By delaying the inevitable as they do, it proves their guilt. Mann’s reputation is finished except with a tiny minority. He’s shown himself to be a poltroon and a fool.
Mickey mannish, living proof that gonadal, cerebral and ethical rot are coincident traits of anti-science climate catastrophists.
Michael Mann should be used with Sir Cyril Burt as examples of scientific misconduct. Both are examples of Noble Cause Corruption, with the difference Mann is still alive to answer for his torturing of data.
“Nobel cause corruption” is a more apt description of Mann’s academic perfidy.
Isn’t that Mickey Mann standing next to Bill Nye the Science idiot? The photo is in many papers but none so far that I’ve seen even mention Mann. In some online papers they only show the middle of the image with Nye. I guess Mann doesn’t rate. I found this at: https://www.rollcall.com/2017/11/16/bill-nye-from-science-guy-to-science-statesman/
Idiot is good, but I prefer Science Goon.
This picture is crying out for a caption competition. My submission:
“No Bill, you spelled it wrong! It’s only 5 letters! Count my fingers.. S.. Y.. E.. N.. S..”
Nice picture of the young and innocent, their parents, and the kids not left behind.
speaking of kids not getting left behind
https://www.foxnews.com/us/baltimore-student-fails-classes-top-half
Reminds me of the OJ trial….Mann is OJ.
You’ve got to hand it to Mark Steyn, who has endured seven years of this nonsense from Mann. Maybe that makes him a worthy successor to the late Rush Limbaugh.
At this rate they will have climate outcomes data to consider.
If the US President didn’t have standing for blatant voting fraud and his lawyer has filing after filing ignored by the SCOTUS without even being able to present evidence… What chance Mark Steyn in the wormhole that is US Justice?
The process is the punishment.
Beat me to it! If the highest courts in the land can effectively ignore the steal…
But, I’m betting on Steyn. But please, sort it in my lifetime!
The response was a fun read for this retired lawyer. Mann motion filed Years too late, inverted burden of proof, confabulated strawmen… Ouch.
Remember, Rud, this is the Swamp’s judicial system. Wanna bet on the political pressure being placed on the judge?
Dunno. But would on take the appeal pro bono—an actual probably unnecessary proffer.
You would be appealing to the Swamp, Rud. Anyway, you are simply another denier.
Judges don’t even need political pressure anymore. They ARE the political activists.
I doubt any sort of political pressure is in play. However, there is something more subtle and insideous. Social pressure. The Team has been characterizing anyone who doesn’t kowtow to ‘climate hysteria” as deniers, flat-earthers, or Big Oil minions. Judges are as vunrable to scorn at cocktail parties as anyone. I feel this is why this case just drags on and on. It should’ve gone to Steyn aged ago, but no judge wants to be the one to side with the troglodytes.
Wonder if Brandon S will stop by to explain how truth is not a defense to defamation claims.
This ordeal is a stain on the legal system. Lightweight DC jurists have evidently concluded that AGW is real, and allow this personal opinion (never supported by evidence) to dominate their thought process. Mann should have filed this partial SJ motion in the early stages, the first two judges assigned to this case would have granted his absurd proposition that truth is not a defense.
…”asserting as his Second Affirmative Defense that the statements at issue made by Defendant Steyn are true.”
In this postmodern age where truth is whatever you think it is, if it exists at all, is truth a legal defense?
No thinking involved, only what they feel is the truth. Reality doesn’t matter to the Left.
Mann’s approach was always ‘lawfair’ not fact based , hence why it was he , the person that started this, that ducked and dived going to court in the first place. And in the land of ‘climate doom ‘ there is a very real fear that given BLM and covid , the political attention which was all they ever had, not science, as moved off and their day in the sun is over.
And science has been so successful in the predictions about Covid!
As they say…the process IS the punishment.
Fred Pierce fairly and bluntly exposed the problem child of science, Michael Mann.
“Who do you Trust? (Michael Mann and Climategate)” https://www.masterresource.org/climategate/michael-mann-climategate/
Man’s progress through the Ages is another chapter
in Mann’s progress though the Courts.
My sincere condolences go to any grad students who be might stuck with this clown as an advisor and trying to get a degree.
Mr. Steyn, “Reality Disproves Manntasy, AGAIN” might be a good title & topic for future book.
can someone please explain this statement?
“We have demonstrated that the three new “statements” Mann has concocted and tried to attribute to Steyn are also true.”
If Mann concocted the statements, wouldn’t Steyn’s legal team have more likely proven they were false?
Jackie, basically that sentence is saying Mann put words into Steyn’s mouth (i.e. concocted statements) to show “defamation” . But, while not actually said by Steyn, those concocted statements wouldn’t be defamatory because they’re true.
Steyn’s legal team only needs prove the statements didn’t come from Steyn, regardless of how true or not they may be. Pointing out that they’re also true statements is a rhetorical flipping the bird at Mikey.