A judge has delivered to major blow to a hockey stick climate scientist who sued National Review, and lost.
The court order in the case involving Michael Mann and the publication refused to delay the payment of $530,000 due National Review for its legal costs in fighting Mann’s 10-year-old lawsuit.
A report from Daily Caller News Foundation said it was the Superior Court of the District of Columbia that had ruled some weeks ago that Mann owed National Review for the outlet’s legal fees in the case.
Mann had requested the payment be delayed, which the court refused to authorize.
The report said that means “he will likely have to pony up cash to an outlet he once described in emails as a ‘threat to our children.’”
He had come up with a graph that looked like a hockey stick, a relatively stable, slighting ascending line, that suddenly exploded to new heights. He said this was the danger from climate change.
Canadian commentator Mark Steyn criticized Mann’s ideas, and then National Review’s Rich Lowry wrote a post following up on Steyn’s criticisms.
Mann sued both, along with, Rand Simberg, a former adjunct for the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Mann’s case against Steyn and Simberg prevailed initially, but the court ordered Mann’s payment to National Review.
Mann told the court that order was “mean-spirited.”
It was reported earlier the court found Mann, of the University of Pennsylvania, and his lawyers presented misleading information to the jury.
Mann and his lawyers “each knowingly made a false statement of fact to the Court and Dr. Mann knowingly participated in the falsehood, endeavoring to make the strongest case possible even if it required using erroneous and misleading information,” the judge said.
“The Court determines that the appropriate sanction is to award each Defendant the approximate expenses they incurred in responding to Dr. Mann’s bad faith trial misconduct, starting with Mr. Fontaine’s redirect examination,” the filing states, referencing Mann attorney Peter Fontaine. “The Court arrives at such a sanction because the misconduct of Dr. Mann and his counsel (1) was extraordinary in its scope, extent, and intent; (2) subjected a jury not only to false evidence and grievous misrepresentations about a crucial part of Dr. Mann’s case, but also to additional trial proceedings for correcting the record and the jury’s impressions thereof that otherwise likely would have been unnecessary; (3) further complicated a trial already rife with convoluted and difficult legal and factual issues; and (4) burdened Defendants and the Court with the time-and resource-intensive task of ascertaining the true extent of the misconduct and determining appropriate remedial measures for the same, all without any meaningful acknowledgement of the nature of the misconduct by Dr. Mann or his attorneys.”
Originally, Simberg was ordered to pay Mann $1,001 in compensatory and punitive damages, while Steyn was told to pay $1,000,001.