Media silent as award in libel case filed by celebrity scientist Michael Mann is lowered to $5,000

A Washington, D.C. district Judge Tuesday reduced the punitive damages award granted to celebrity climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann in a defamation lawsuit against Rand Simberg, an analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and National Review blogger Mark Steyn. In February 2024, a D.C. jury had awarded Mann a single dollar in compensatory damages from Steyn but added $1 million in punitive damages. Judge Alfred Irving lowered the amount to $5,000. 

The reduction in award — called "remittitur" — comes less than two months after Irving ordered Mann to pay the National Review Inc. more than $500,000 in the publication’s lawsuit against Mann over the same case. The publication succeeded in having the case dismissed under D.C.'s "Anti-SLAPP law" that provides for attorneys fees to a successful libel defendant in a matter of public concern.

The D.C. jury’s $1 million award was widely reported in many legacy media outlets, most of whom protest defamation awards against journalists. Yet, there’s been little coverage of the ruling against Mann in the either National Review’s lawsuit or the reduction of the award even though they may benefit from rulings such as this.

“I have had no inquiries from them since the decision yesterday, so I think it is safe to assume they will not be correcting the record,” Melissa Howes, president of Mark Steyn Enterprises Inc., told Just the News. 

Expert report: Mann's methodology was "deceptive and misleading"

In 2012, Simberg had posted an article on his blog that compared the Penn State’s investigation into assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who was found guilty that year of sexually abusing 10 young boys over the course of 15 years, to the investigation of Mann’s research on global historic temperatures as shown in the scientist's controversial hockey stick graph. 

Steyn quoted Simberg’s post and called Mann’s research “fraudulent.” Mann contended that as a result of these posts, his reputation was harmed. Other scientists have criticized the methodology Mann used to create the graph. In an expert report prepared for Steyn’s counsel, Dr. Judith Curry, president at Climate Forecast Applications Network, wrote that in her opinion, it’s reasonable to call the graph "'fraudulent,' in the sense that aspects of it are deceptive and misleading.’” It appears the hyperbolic comparison to Sandusky is what landed Steyn and Simberg in hot water. 

Scientific American had described the original $1 million award as a “victory” and said the case was a “warning to those who attack scientists working in controversial fields.” The Washington Post also described the verdict as a “victory” and said it comes “amid heightened attacks on scientists working not just on climate change but also on vaccines and other issues.”

When environmentalists are on the receiving end of a libel suit, legacy media like The Washington Post have rallied around the libel defendants by publishing a sympathetic story. In the case against Greenpeace the Post quoted Greenpeace executive Sushma Raman saying: “A bad ruling in this case could put our rights and freedoms in jeopardy for all of us, whether we are journalists, protesters or anyone who wants to engage in public debate.” The question in Steyn's case is whether the legacy media is concerned with protecting the rights of journalists who may be taking a position unpopular with journalists.

A New York Times article two days before the award was announced opened up with a dramatic recounting of Mann reading the offending blog posts. “The court case has played out over a time period when outright denial of climate science has decreased, but scientists’ integrity has become a bigger target,” the Times reporter Delger Erdenesanaa wrote. 

As with the Post and Scientific American articles, the Times article had no examples of these alleged “attacks” against climate scientists, such as screenshots or quotes. The entire claim is based on climate scientists claiming they’ve been attacked, which makes it hard to determine if the statements they’re characterizing as attacks are excessive or just legitimate criticism. 

To bolster its claim that scientists are being attacked, the Times article cites a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate arguing that YouTube is profiting from what it calls a new form of climate denial. Examples of this so-called “denial” are videos stating that clean energy won’t work, that climate policies are harmful, and suggesting there’s uncertainty in climate science — basically anything that criticizes climate activists’ political agenda. 

Humble scientists

While the legacy media celebrated the award and appeared to view disagreement with climate policies as an “attack” on climate scientists, critics of Mann's research had worried the $1 million award would limit their ability to scrutinize his and other celebrity scientists’ claims. Anthony Watts, senior fellow for environment and climate at the Heartland Institute, told Just the News that Mann’s lawsuit was driven by his ego and not from science. 

“Scientists are supposed to be humble. They're supposed to be about the facts and not about rhetoric. Not about their vision and about their belief system, not about politics. Dr. Mann is all of those things. He thinks he's a rock star in the field of science, but what he really is is a rock star in the field of rhetoric,” Watts said. 

Less than two weeks after the verdict, Mann responded to a post on X about late-night host John Oliver offering $1 million for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign, to which Mann replied, “I’ll add a million dollars to that.” In December, Mann announced his X account would go dormant after President Donald Trump assumed office, and directed his fans to his account on BlueSky. The platform is a competitor of X and has content restrictions similar to that of Twitter before billionaire Elon Musk bought it. Many progressives migrated over to BlueSky when X began removing restrictions on conservative perspectives. 

“He's created a giant echo chamber for himself, where he only hears from people that he wants to hear from. He doesn't want to hear anything contrary,” Watts said. 

The “land of free speech”

Journalists Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney attended the trial against Mark Steyn and posted regular podcasts about what the testimony revealed. When the episodes aired, they ranked in the top 15 podcasts on Spotify in the science category. McAleer told Just the News that the reduction in the award showed some measure of justice, but the case should have never gone to trial. 

“This is a trial that should never have happened in the “land of free speech.” I sat in the courtyard every day. It was clear that what Mark Steyn wrote was not defamatory. He made the point that officials at Penn State could not be trusted to investigate their star climate scientist [in the way] they failed to investigate Jerry Sandusky,” McAleer said. 

McAleer produced the documentary “Fracknation,” which challenged the anti-fracking narratives in the 2010 documentary “Gasland” by Josh Fox. Fox’s documentary is widely credited with launching the anti-fracking movement, but many of its predictions about the oil and gas industry turned out to be false. Forbes reported about the film's inclusion of a staged scene of a landowner in Parker County, TX, lighting his water hose on fire.

In a 2012 Texas District Court proceeding, the court said the scene was made after the homeowner and and anti-petroleum activist “…attach(ed) a garden hose to a gas vent – not to a water line – and then light and burn the gas from the end of the nozzle of the hose. The demonstration was not done for scientific study but to provide local and national news media a deceptive video, calculated to alarm the public into believing the water was burning … [and] alarm the EPA.”

McAleer said climate change is an issue that needs to be debated openly, as climate policies to respond to it drive up energy costs. 

It “is a matter of huge importance to some of the poorest people in America and on the planet. They will pay the price for climate hysteria that is based on fake science,” McAleer said. 

Grossly excessive

Writing on the “The Volokh Conspiracy” blog, legal expert Eugene Volokh notes that in the decision to reduce the award the judge didn’t dispute the jury’s findings that Steyn and Sandberg had libeled Mann. The issue was with the punitive award. 

In a statement, Schaerr Jaffe LLP, which represented Steyn in his motion for remittitur, called the original award “grossly excessive,” and the reduction a “significant victory.” 

Legal expert Jonathan Adler had predicted shortly after the original verdict that the punitive damages would be vulnerable to appeal. 

“Under existing Supreme Court precedent, excessive punitive damages violate Due Process. So, for example, in BMW of North America v. Gore, the Court held that a punitive damage award of $2 million was excessive given that the plaintiff had only been awarded $2,000 in compensatory damages. This 1000-to-1 ratio, the Court held, could not be justified even considering the extent to which the defendant had engaged in egregious conduct,” Adler explained in the “The Volokh Conspiracy” in 2024. 

Mann’s appeal of the reduction turns on his ability to show that the reduction was an "abuse of discretion," meaning that an appellate court will only overturn a trial court's decision to grant a remittitur if the decision was clearly unreasonable or based on an incorrect legal standard.  Mann has the task of arguing that the 1,000,000-to-1 ratio between compensatory and punitive damages isn’t excessive. 

The court may have decided that Steyn and Sandberg went too far in their criticisms of Mann’s “hockey stick” graph, but the criticisms of Mann’s “hockey stick” graph and other aspects of the scientist’s behavior, remain safely protected by the First Amendment. 

Emails to Michael Mann’s media contact asking for comment and if he plans to appeal were not returned, but Mark Steyn’s website stated that Mann has already appealed the ruling. It remains to be seen if the legacy media takes note of the appeal, and if their coverage mentions the First Amendment, or instead protects climate change proponents from opposing views by remaining silent.