It would not have been surprising at all that a visitor to Mark Steyn’s home in New Hampshire, USA, on the evening of March 4th would have heard the popping of bottles of champagne being opened and the clinking of glasses amidst cheerful toasts. On that Tuesday, Justice Judge Alfred S. Irving Jr. of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia issued a long (over 14,000 words) Final Judgment Order, reducing the punitive damages charged against Steyn from an astronomical $1 million to a modest $5,000 in a 13-years long defamation suit launched by the plaintiff Michael Mann in October 2012.
If that visitor would have gone to Mr Steyn’s home on March 12th he would probably have heard more popping of corks and clinking of glasses celebrating a further decision by the same judge. In an eviscerating judgment, the court ruled that Dr Mann and his counsel acted in “bad faith” on multiple occasions in presenting false claims related to the plaintiff’s grant funding. Judge Irving said:
Here, the Court finds, by clear and convincing evidence, that Dr Mann, through [his lawyers] Mr Fontaine and Mr Williams, acted in bad faith when they presented erroneous evidence and made false representations to the jury and the Court regarding damages stemming from loss of grant funding. … The Court does not reach this decision lightly.
The judge didn’t mince his words about Mann and his two lead lawyers:
They each knowingly made a false statement of fact to the Court and Dr Mann knowingly participated in the falsehood, endeavouring to make the strongest case possible even if it required using erroneous and misleading information.
The judge went on:
Dr Mann’s assertion that there was no falsehood or misrepresentation in his testimony or his counsel’s conduct borders on frivolity… the record plainly shows the deliberate and knowing misconduct of Dr Mann’s counsel in eliciting false testimony from Dr Mann and misrepresenting his grant funding… Dr Mann’s counsel’s bad faith misconduct is an affront to the Court’s authority and an attack on the integrity of the proceedings warranting sanctions.
The court was convinced that “the record plainly shows deliberate and knowing misconduct of Dr Mann’s counsel in eliciting false testimony” which was presented to the court and jury. The court decreed that each defendant (Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn) can now sue for expenses incurred in responding to Dr Mann’s “misconduct”.
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.
Justice Delayed is Justice Denied: the Process is the Punishment
I wrote in these pages on Sunday (March 10th) about the legal ‘hockey stick’ saga which took place over 12 years with multiple suits, counter-suits and interlocutory actions and costing millions in legal fees. The judgment delivered yesterday is probably not the end of the matter, and it is not clear what the quantum of fees will be that each of the defendants can claim from Mann’s misconduct in the trial. But recovery of legal costs by the two defendants cannot compensate for the time consumed, the toll it took on their mental and physical health and the sheer anxiety that such legal ordeals can cause their victims.
For interested readers, a short timeline of the main events of the ‘climate trial of the century‘ will be informative:
- July 2012: Rand Simberg of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) published a blog post criticising Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ chart, controversially comparing him to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky by stating that Mann had “molested and tortured data”. Shortly after, Mark Steyn referenced Simberg’s post on the National Review’s blog, labelling Mann’s work as “fraudulent”.
- October 22nd 2012: Michael Mann filed a defamation lawsuit in the District of Columbia Superior Court against Mark Steyn, the National Review, Rand Simberg and the CEI, alleging that their statements were defamatory.
- December 22nd 2016: The DC Court of Appeals ruled that Mann’s case against Simberg and Steyn could proceed, stating that a “reasonable jury” could find against the defendants.
- May 2019: National Review‘s Special Motion to Dismiss prevailed in large part, with the court dismissing Mann’s libel claim based on Editor Rich Lowry’s ‘Get Lost’ post and the broader intentional infliction of emotional distress claim against National Review. However, the defamation claim based on Mark Steyn’s blog post was not dismissed, allowing that part of the case to continue.
- March 19th 2021: The DC Superior Court granted summary judgment in favour of the National Review, stating that actual malice could not be imputed to the company based on the state of mind of an independent contractor like Steyn.
- January 16th 2024: The rescheduled trial commenced. After deliberations, the jury found that both Simberg and Steyn had defamed Mann. The jury awarded Mann $1 in compensatory damages from each writer, $1,000 in punitive damages from Simberg and $1 million in punitive damages from Steyn.
- March 11th 2024: National Review filed a motion in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia to recover a portion of the legal fees incurred during the litigation, seeking over $1 million from Mann.
- January 7th 2025: The court issued a decision awarding National Review $530,820.21 in attorneys’ fees and costs.
- March 4th 2025: The Superior Court of the District of Columbia reduced the punitive damages against Mark Steyn from $1 million to $5,000, deeming the original award “grossly excessive and unconstitutional”.
- March 12th 2025: The court sanctioned Michael Mann’s legal team for misconduct during the trial, ordering it to pay a portion of the defendants’ legal fees. The court cited improper conduct during discovery and trial proceedings as the basis for these sanctions.
Free Speech and the Corruption of Science
After jury deliberations in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia found the defendants Simberg and Steyn guilty of defamation in January 2024 – resulting in the extremely steep punitive damages against Steyn – Mann co-authored an article in the New York Times entitled ‘A Slap Shot Against Climate Denial’. He claimed that scientists like himself documenting the “fact” that Earth’s temperature has been rapidly rising since the early 20th Century due to the use of fossil fuels “continue to face attacks that threaten their research, reputations and livelihoods”.
He asserted that “the assault on climate science has grown broader and more sophisticated”. In support of this, he cited the Climate Science Legal Defence Fund, which warned that sweeping and “invasive open records requests” to harass and intimidate and “other misuse of the legal system” continue to “threaten climate scientists’ ability to freely conduct research and openly share it with the public”.
Mann said he hoped the finding of the Washington DC jury against the defendants for defamation “sends a broader message that defamatory attacks on scientists go beyond the bounds of protected speech and have consequences”. He asserts that his legal case against Steyn and Simberg “is part of a larger culture war in which research is distorted and the truth about the climate threat is dissembled”.
Calling his critics “climate deniers” engaged in a “broader war on science”, Mann claimed that the trial “has drawn a line in the sand”. “Scientists,” he said, “now know that they can respond to attacks by suing for defamation.” Mann and his academic and political allies cast those who disagree with them as “climate deniers”. The mainstream media (e.g. here and here) largely portrayed the ‘hockey stick’ trial as one that pit ‘climate deniers’ against ‘climate science’.
Climate science of course is cast as settled and indisputable. The epithet ‘climate denier’ is intended to invoke Holocaust denial, an objectionable, tasteless and inapt comparison. Climate change is not like the Holocaust, nor is questioning the accuracy and predictive power of climate change models like questioning the historical fact of a genocide that in which six million Jews were murdered.
In March 2025, the tables turned against Michael Mann when Justice Judge Irving Jr. slashed the $1 million punitive damage awarded against Steyn to $5,000. Judge Irving took cognisance of the Supreme Court’s suggestion that a “single-digit ratio” (e.g. 4:1, 5:1 or even 9:1) between punitive and compensatory damages is generally the upper limit for constitutionally permissible awards. While the $5,000 award in punitive damages is still 5,000 times the compensatory damage award of $1 (a four-digit ratio), nevertheless the absolute amount charged against Steyn was no longer prohibitive. It was within Steyn’s 2024 request to the judge to drastically reduce the punitive damages, which he argued should be “$5,000 or less”.
The March 2025 order no doubt helped prevent the legal system from being used as a tool to intimidate and silence critics (like Mark Steyn) of the prevailing climate narrative. When Steyn and Simberg petitioned the Supreme Court (unsuccessfully) to take the case in 2019, Chief Justice Alito made a rousing defence of free speech in his dissent. Justice Alito observed that “when allegedly defamatory speech concerns a political or social issue that arouses intense feelings, selecting an impartial jury presents special difficulties”.
Alito continued: “When… allegedly defamatory speech is disseminated nationally, a plaintiff may be able to bring suit in whichever jurisdiction seems likely to have the highest percentage of jurors who are sympathetic to the plaintiff’s point of view.” Liberal Washington DC juries were bound to punish Steyn, a high-profile conservative commentator. He has appeared in conservative national media networks such as Fox News and as a guest host for Rush Limbaugh on contentious topics including the culture wars and Covid.
Even in the febrile politically correct atmosphere of Washington DC, the irony of the latest twist in the ‘hockey stick’ trial cannot have escaped any reasonably objective observer. Dr. Mann was found guilty of fraud in a court of law. In short, the hero turned out to be the anti-hero.
In the “climate trial of the century”, Mark Steyn seems to have come out on top so far. And so has free speech in the contested area of climate change.
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
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OK
But Liz we need offshore wind farms like we need a hole in the head.
Speaking of which, I don’t know if they’re already doing something like this in the UK. I’m also wondering why they don’t do this on land instead, given that the bodies of the poor birds can at least be counted, and what arbitrary number of killed birds will they declare ‘acceptable’?
”Energy firm Vattenfall is going to place infrared cameras on one of its wind turbines in the North Sea to gauge how many birds are killed by the blades.
At the moment the decision to stop or slow turbines lies with the economic affairs ministry. It uses models which predict deaths at busy times of year, such as spring and autumn when millions of birds cross the North Sea on their migratory routes.
In 2023, North Sea turbines were halted three times to protect birds and some 50,000 are killed each year, experts have estimated.
The predictions do not give an accurate picture, Vattenfall said, because the dead birds fall into the sea and disappear in the current.
Some 16 infrared cameras will be placed on the turbine, which is part of an offshore wind farm some 18 kilometres from the coast near The Hague.”
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2024/04/vattenfall-to-put-cameras-on-wind-turbine-to-count-dead-birds/
Was that sliver of fantasy included to let it pass the Telegraph censors?
Truss may not be much good at politics but she is usually right on the substance of policy. Net Zero is economic lunacy. Most members of her rotten party are in thrall to authoritarian collectivism, however, and after fourteen disastrous years in government they deserve to be wiped out in the forthcoming election. Things need to get even worse before they get better.
And erecting a giant hamster wheel to power the UK will make it nirvana. If you didn’t realise it truss is a fool, the ppl in politics are very low quality, even the few who say the odd sensible thing.
If you reject sound advice, just because the source isn’t consistently reliable, we won’t get anything worthwhile from the political bubble, or the Legacy Media: though I usually can’t tell the difference between the two.
And if you reject newcomers, just because they haven’t done anything yet that is worthy of approval, because they haven’t been in office, we will be doomed to failure, and national destruction.
Don’t let Perfection be the enemy of Good.
I’ve posted about this before: the ridiculous lowering of the national speed limit here in the Netherlands, which came into force 4 years back. The speed limit that any normal, sane person ignores, especially if you regularly travel over the border to neighbouring Belgium or Germany, who don’t have such a nonsensical rule. Well lo and behold research has shown that it’s made bugger all meaningful difference. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the alleged pitiful 0.2% reduction in nitrogen could be explained by the significant increase in electric cars in the last few years, because they’re everywhere over here now;
”The PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB are discussing whether the speed limits on Dutch highways can be increased back to 130 kilometers per hour, sources told the newspaper AD on Tuesday. The topic has been on the agenda for a few weeks, but the leak to the media now may be an attempt to distract from a looming impasse on the asylum and migration file, political reporters think.
Four years ago, the Rutte III Cabinet lowered the maximum speed limit on highways to 100 kilometers per hour between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. in an attempt to lower nitrogen emissions. But a recent study by Wim de Vries, a professor and nitrogen expert at Wageningen University, showed that the lower speed limit only reduced nitrogen emissions by at most 0.2 percent on paper.”
https://nltimes.nl/2024/04/16/parties-formation-talks-investigating-return-130-kmh-speed-limit
Net Zero is meant to replace existing infrastructure that works, with new infrastructure that is less efficient and using money that will be taken from the economy in taxes, and thus will reduce wealth creating economic activity.
To get less output for greater input, is the inverse of efficiency and economic growth.
While Truss might have been one of the least treacherous and incompetent of Johnson replacements ( others such as Braverman or Badenoch might have been better) , here I have to agree with her to some extent. Technically she is wrong on more offshore wind energy unless her recommendation for more Nuclear and shale gas derived generation is acted on. And even then, the regulatory process for the former seems designed to block implementation for around 2 decades. We have far in excess of the % wind renewable power for a stable grid. Tidal power would be a more revelant source for an island nation.
We are paying on average 2 1/4 times US electricty prices and 3 1/2 times S Korean prices ( Domestic and business average ). Yet the latter has limited and depleted gas field resources and imports most of its energy as Liquid Natural Gas. Which is carried at -159 degC, Liz not -180. Ludicrously we refuse to use our own onshore resources and there are those that believe USA sabotaged the Nordstream pipeline in order to provide a captive export market once most of the Gulf coast LNG import terminals had been converted to re-liquefy and export its own shale gas.
Tidal power has its own problems: peak power moves to different times every day, just look at the high tide times around Britain for the relevant information. And how does the power at 3am, in the Summer, get stored for use at 6pm in the Winter? And then each location has its ecological disaster waiting in the wings, whether it’s the silting up of the created reservoir, that will need power to be removed, to changes in the water table. And this is in addition to the disruption of shipping. And there are very few sites where it’s possible anyway.
The built in snag is the conflation of environmental management and “Climate Change” scaremongering. The established techniques for environment issues, especially in urban areas, are OK, but the ideas of manipulating the weather itself are not. Those that believe in “Net Zero” are skirting around this flawed concept of pretending that they are the same things, but they are not.
I have just read Toby’s article above this about the black, female version of Ranting – that’s Rayner by the way – the one who loves to use the principal weapon so beloved of her colleague Diane Abacus ie the Race Card ( never leave home without it) and there is no option to comment.
Mods???
I read it too and feel very sorry for the way Toby was treated by an MP with ‘previous’ form. The article was to defend Prof Cass who has been threatened and upset by some people who think it is acceptable to experiment on children with life changing consequences.
Look at what a collection of MP’s does to vast swathes of the population or even to individuals such as Mr Assange. Isn’t that why such people are in Parliament (but really shouldn’t be)?
Well I thought it disgusting that this woman gets away with resorting to smears and slander, not just once but on multiple counts, like she has some sort of vindictive agenda against Toby. All because she has nothing factual in her arsenal with which to attack him, she resorts to scraping the barrel using a pack of lies. To pot with all this ”disinformation”, it’s just blatant lies. Shame on this nasty, spiteful piece of work. And she should be shamed far and wide for her vile behaviour because it says a great deal about somebody’s character, let alone their professionalism, or lack thereof.
“there is no option to comment”
Thanks, I noticed that and wasn’t sure if I’d missed something.
It wasn’t like it was an article that required a comment on censorship.
Yeah, not sure if that’s a boob or deliberate. One can’t always be sure these days….
What you betting the Miserable Git Association now descend on me for commenting off-topic?
You’ll be safe as houses, as ever though.
“Diane Abacus”
Love it.
Like your vote she doesn’t count. Or in her case not particularly well.
Thanks
Off-T
https://off-guardian.org/2024/04/19/bird-flu-censorship-100-day-vaccines-7-predictions-for-the-next-pandemic/
Kit Knightly at Off-G discussing the why’s and wherefores of the next Scamdemic which he predicts for January 2025 and will probably be linked to bird ‘flu which will of course allow them to shut down farming.
“ is the rise of authoritarian regimes and the decline of democracy”
Does she include the West?
Yesterday on the radio I tuned in to BBC 4 ( sorry not got DAB ) there was an episode called Antisocial. They were discussing Highway Code, cyclists and car users. They had a real based guy on there ‘James’. not sure the surname. He was criticising the climate cult, their war on cars and Jeremy Vine. Enough to cause an Aneurysm in the BBC studios.
Blimey.
A hidden 5th columnist then? Brilliant!
I liked her from the first. Quirky? Yes. Naive? Yes.
Stitched up by the Bank of England and globalist cabal? Absolutely.
She’s got guts and is correct about a lot of issues. I disagree on Ukraine, but think she would have been the most conservative PM since Thatcher.
More power to her.
I was neither for nor against Liz Truss until the Davos Deviants got involved and clearly told the tory hierarchy to get her out at which point I was firmly a supporter. This was probably the most shameful act of political backstabbing that I have seen in my lifetime. Truss’s views on the economy were correct and an about turn on the fiscal madness was desperately necessary. However, according to the rules the tory hierarchy have been given this country must be driven to bankruptcy which was why The Hunt was forced on Truss. When this manoeuvre failed to get rid she was chased out. I suspect Liz Truss has no skeletons with which she can be blackmailed. I also expect she has some very dark secrets tucked away and which will be let loose if she is harmed.
At least she is giving some return fire. As the saying goes…Every little helps.
Truss was born into a Left Wing family and has traveled across the political spectrum to end up with a good smattering of Conservative Ideas, with most of the travelling being done while within a ‘Conservative Party’ government. It’s quite a feat, really!
It’s why she doesn’t have a History of solid conservative thinking behind her, but it is also how she managed to get into the Parliamentary ‘Conservative Party’ while Cameron was around, when being a LibDem minded Conservative (in name only) was a ticket to success.
I hope she continues to speak out (and we can support her better suggestions) as, at the moment, there is very little worth coming from the party. And there is much to be said.
According to Nadine Dorries in her book, that was the plan. To destroy the Tory party. Maybe something to do with Brexit, that as we know, never really happened.
I have been reading books on Crypto currencies and FTX, what struck me was the amount of energy that the data centres that support this and in future A.I. use in terms of cooling etc,. These things which lets face it are owned by and used by the”Elite” billionaire boys to make more money to buy more private jets useso much emergy in the form of electricity that it dwarfs what the average city would normally use, and there is simply insufficient energy based on current restrictions to power A.I., crypto and the normal needs of citizens and yet the Eco zealots and protesters do not talk or shout for the shutting down of these data centres, neither does Government do anything, in fact the opposite, Sunak et al actively encourages A.I. Why do you think that is?
Conclusion the little people don;t matter, we are dispensible, disposable, what matters is that the tech nerds get to get richer and the Politicians continue to suck up to them.
“the rise of authoritarian regimes and the decline of democracy” is certainly a problem. Britain is a great example.
But which party does Truss support? Ah yes, the Fake Conservatives, under whose watch British democracy has significantly declined, and the State has become a good deal more authoritarian.
She needs to resign from the Conservatives, or get back in her box.
But Miss Truus did you raise those questions in 2019 when Net Zero was being waved through Parliament? ——-I do not think you did. You were part of the group think of all the main party MP’s who asked no questions of cost or viability of Net Zero. There was no DEBATE, and no VOTE. ——You all just waved it on through.