excalibur
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Now he and his attorney's are sanctioned by the court.
That he 'won' his case only goes to show that no one who is outside the deep state machine can get a fair jury trial in DC.
Thirteen years ago, I took on what I thought to be the exciting and challenging task of representing National Review and former National Review contributor Mark Steyn in a lawsuit brought in D.C. Superior Court by then-Penn State professor Michael Mann arising out of a Corner post by Mr. Steyn. In that post, Steyn quoted another blogger's criticism of Mr. Mann's infamous "hockey stick" graph, which had been adopted and overhyped by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One of the first things I told my clients was that they'd have to be patient — the wheels of "justice" often turn slowly. But I had thought at the time that a reasonable judge would likely dismiss the case for what it was — a desperate plea for attention from an attention-loving plaintiff.
Thirteen years later, the case still grinds through the D.C. local courts. It has left in its wake the longstanding relationship between Steyn and National Review, which fell apart in the stresses of litigation, as well as my own friendship (regrettably) and professional relationship with Steyn — who, after we lost the motion to dismiss that should have ended the case in its earliest days, decided to go it alone and largely represent himself in what was to become a Sisyphean ordeal (he later brought on my friend Christopher Bartolomucci, a truly outstanding lawyer, to work with him at trial). And it has cost millions of dollars and countless man hours devoted to litigating an alleged defamatory post that, at the end of the day, a jury found caused no economic harm to Mann. As Steyn often notes with an understandable (though perhaps at times inadvisable) public disdain, the litigation process has caused enough damage to Steyn and National Review to eclipse any possible harm alleged by Mann from a post that only garnered any significant attention when a lawsuit was filed.
By the time the case got to trial, National Review had been dismissed as a defendant. After repeated appeals that went up and back to the U.S. Supreme Court, multiple motions for judgment, and prolonged discovery heavily resisted by the plaintiff, the case finally proceeded to trial against Steyn and Rand Simberg, the blogger that he had quoted in his 2012 Corner post. The result of the jury trial was a pyrrhic "victory" for Mann. He was awarded $1 in nominal damages against both defendants. In other words, the jury thought he had not suffered an iota of economic harm from Steyn's words. Nevertheless, the jury, apparently biased against Steyn's longstanding role as a conservative commentator, his many appearances on Fox News, and his occasional fill-in role for Rush Limbaugh (all of which was put before them) — ordered Steyn to pay $1 million in punitive damages. The jury award was lauded in the mainstream media.
And now, it has all unraveled for Michael Mann. Since the jury verdict, the Superior Court has ordered him to pay National Review more than $500,000 in attorneys' fees under the D.C. anti-SLAPP law (including some for my own time early in the case). And just this week, the court took it a step further, finding that Mann and his lawyers had acted in bad faith and knowingly presented false evidence to the jury in an exhibit exaggerating the grant money that Mann had lost as a result of the alleged defamation. The court sanctioned Mann and his lawyers for the deliberate misrepresentation to the court and to the jury. At the same time, it reduced the amount of the punitive damages award (as it well should have under constitutional due process standards), from $1 million to a mere $5,000.
...
But despite the interminable, inexcusable length of the litigation, and the unfortunate jury verdict, there is at least some rough justice. Mann has been shown to have "knowingly participated in the falsehood" to the court — one that is likely to seriously (and fairly) prejudice his chances of appeal, has been ordered to pay fees and costs nearly 100 times what he has been awarded, and stands to lose more on appeal. All of this could have been avoided, of course, had the D.C. Superior Court (or the D.C. Court of Appeals) done the right thing and dismissed his claims as baseless. But the events of the case since the trial have turned Mann's "victory" into a hollow one indeed.
www.nationalreview.com
That he 'won' his case only goes to show that no one who is outside the deep state machine can get a fair jury trial in DC.
Thirteen years ago, I took on what I thought to be the exciting and challenging task of representing National Review and former National Review contributor Mark Steyn in a lawsuit brought in D.C. Superior Court by then-Penn State professor Michael Mann arising out of a Corner post by Mr. Steyn. In that post, Steyn quoted another blogger's criticism of Mr. Mann's infamous "hockey stick" graph, which had been adopted and overhyped by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One of the first things I told my clients was that they'd have to be patient — the wheels of "justice" often turn slowly. But I had thought at the time that a reasonable judge would likely dismiss the case for what it was — a desperate plea for attention from an attention-loving plaintiff.
Thirteen years later, the case still grinds through the D.C. local courts. It has left in its wake the longstanding relationship between Steyn and National Review, which fell apart in the stresses of litigation, as well as my own friendship (regrettably) and professional relationship with Steyn — who, after we lost the motion to dismiss that should have ended the case in its earliest days, decided to go it alone and largely represent himself in what was to become a Sisyphean ordeal (he later brought on my friend Christopher Bartolomucci, a truly outstanding lawyer, to work with him at trial). And it has cost millions of dollars and countless man hours devoted to litigating an alleged defamatory post that, at the end of the day, a jury found caused no economic harm to Mann. As Steyn often notes with an understandable (though perhaps at times inadvisable) public disdain, the litigation process has caused enough damage to Steyn and National Review to eclipse any possible harm alleged by Mann from a post that only garnered any significant attention when a lawsuit was filed.
By the time the case got to trial, National Review had been dismissed as a defendant. After repeated appeals that went up and back to the U.S. Supreme Court, multiple motions for judgment, and prolonged discovery heavily resisted by the plaintiff, the case finally proceeded to trial against Steyn and Rand Simberg, the blogger that he had quoted in his 2012 Corner post. The result of the jury trial was a pyrrhic "victory" for Mann. He was awarded $1 in nominal damages against both defendants. In other words, the jury thought he had not suffered an iota of economic harm from Steyn's words. Nevertheless, the jury, apparently biased against Steyn's longstanding role as a conservative commentator, his many appearances on Fox News, and his occasional fill-in role for Rush Limbaugh (all of which was put before them) — ordered Steyn to pay $1 million in punitive damages. The jury award was lauded in the mainstream media.
And now, it has all unraveled for Michael Mann. Since the jury verdict, the Superior Court has ordered him to pay National Review more than $500,000 in attorneys' fees under the D.C. anti-SLAPP law (including some for my own time early in the case). And just this week, the court took it a step further, finding that Mann and his lawyers had acted in bad faith and knowingly presented false evidence to the jury in an exhibit exaggerating the grant money that Mann had lost as a result of the alleged defamation. The court sanctioned Mann and his lawyers for the deliberate misrepresentation to the court and to the jury. At the same time, it reduced the amount of the punitive damages award (as it well should have under constitutional due process standards), from $1 million to a mere $5,000.
...
But despite the interminable, inexcusable length of the litigation, and the unfortunate jury verdict, there is at least some rough justice. Mann has been shown to have "knowingly participated in the falsehood" to the court — one that is likely to seriously (and fairly) prejudice his chances of appeal, has been ordered to pay fees and costs nearly 100 times what he has been awarded, and stands to lose more on appeal. All of this could have been avoided, of course, had the D.C. Superior Court (or the D.C. Court of Appeals) done the right thing and dismissed his claims as baseless. But the events of the case since the trial have turned Mann's "victory" into a hollow one indeed.
The Tables Turn on Michael Mann | National Review
The events of the case since the trial have turned Mann’s ‘victory’ into a hollow one indeed.
www.nationalreview.com
