RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/after-12-years-michael-manns-defamation-case-against-mark-steyn-finally-goes-to-the-jury/

After nearly 12 years, a jury will finally decide whether conservative pundit Mark Steyn and science writer Rand Simberg defamed climate scientist Michael Mann in blog posts that accused him of misconduct and compared Penn State University’s investigation of him to its investigation of Jerry Sandusky, the school’s child-molesting former football coach.

The case has important implications for the free-speech rights of critics to comment freely on controversial matters without fear of legal reprisals.

The jury began deliberating around 4 p.m.

During closing arguments on Wednesday, Mann’s attorney, John Williams told the jury that the statements against his client were “clearly” defamatory, the comparison to Sandusky was direct, and it “implied that he was the moral

He said that Mann was “horrified” by the comparison to Sandusky, felt like a “pariah,” and “it still affects him emotionally.” He said that the blog posts on the websites of National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute led to a drop in Mann’s grant funding.

He said Simberg’s conduct was “reckless” because he “never, ever took the time to read the actual studies he was attacking.” He called Mann’s hockey stick graph, which shows spiking global temperatures over the last century, a “brick house.”

“People huff and they puff, and they have not been able to blow it down,” he said.

But Victoria Weatherford, Simberg’s attorney, said that her client “truly believed in his heart” that what he wrote was true, and his blog post was protected by the First Amendment.

“Professor Mann is a public figure, and our First Amendment makes sure that each of us is free to comment on the most important issues of public concern without fear of being censored or silenced or bullied into submission,” she said.

“Rand is just a guy, just a blogger voicing his truly-held opinions on a topic that he believes is important,” she said, “and that is an inconvenient truth for Michael Mann.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-2-6-trial-of-mann-v-steyn-part-iv-the-defense-case

The trial of Michael Mann versus Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg is nearing its conclusion in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

The court’s livestream feed makes it possible for people like me to observe the proceedings from home. However, they only show to the home viewers the same things that the jury gets to see and hear, and not necessarily all of that either. For example, some exhibits that are shown to the jury on an easel in the courtroom are not visible on the video feed. Also, many things happen in the courtroom that the jury is not allowed to watch or hear — the general idea being that the jury is supposed to base its decision only on evidence that gets “admitted” by the judge, and therefore anything that is not evidence is not something they can participate in. So when the lawyers argue legal issues before the judge — mostly about what can be admitted into evidence — the jury can’t hear it, and they also mute the video feed to home viewers. Other colloquy between the judge and the lawyers, often on administrative matters, is generally muted. Of about 5 1/2 hours of trial time each day, often an hour or more has been muted.

And thus it is not entirely clear to me that tomorrow is the last day of trial. But there was a stray unmuted remark from the judge on Monday that he hoped the jury would “get the case” on Wednesday. That means that closing arguments are likely to be tomorrow.

The last two days, Monday and Tuesday, have seen the presentation of the guts of the defense case. These were the main witnesses: Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, authors of a series of papers in the early 2000s that dissected Mann’s work and discovered several serious flaws; two members of the Penn State “Inquiry” Committee, that investigated Mann after the release of the ClimateGate emails in late 2009, and made no adverse finding against Mann (Mann has claimed that he was “exonerated”); and Eugene Wahl, a climate scientist and collaborator of Mann who had deleted certain emails that were subject to FOIA requests after Mann forwarded him a request to do so.

What follows are what I thought were some of the more significant highlights. Obviously, there is much that I have omitted. Also, I should note that I am a terrible note-taker. Also, many of the exhibits appeared quickly on the screen, without sufficient time to copy their contents accurately. So I have done my best, but I solicit any corrections from others who may have been watching.