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ANALYSIS: Judge wipes out virtually his entire award, ordered to pay $1 million total in defendants’ fees

It’s been a bad week for University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann.

The week before last he got heat for posting on social media (regarding a federal judge’s ruling on dismantling the Dept. of Education) that “If Trump doesn’t comply, we’re in second amendment territory.”

After being called out for the seeming call to violence against the president, Mann deleted the post, but responded with “The second amendment refers to the right of the people to rise up and defend democracy. To argue this is a threat against Trump is very dishonest.”

But Mann perhaps is best known for his over-a-decade-old libel lawsuit against National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and bloggers Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn for referring to his methodologies as “fraudulent” and “intellectually bogus.”

Mann initially won, being awarded $1 million by a court last year.

However, three years before a court ruled that National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute were not liable for defamation. Mann said he would appeal.

Then this January, DC Superior Court Judge Alfred Irving ordered Mann to pay National Review over $500,000 for its legal fees, and this was followed in March by a reduction of Mann’s “grossly excessive” $1 million award … to just $5,000.

Finally, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that just over a week ago, Irving ordered Mann to pony up $477,000 for the legal fees of the CEI and Simberg.

MORE: News organizations line up against climate science prof for suing critics

From the story:

“My lawyers and I believe that the fee award entered by the trial court was not correctly decided, and we intend to seek further review of that award,” Mann said in a statement. ”In the meantime, we also are pursuing an appeal from the trial court’s earlier ruling reducing the punitive damages awarded to me by the jury and other errors.” …

Part of Mann’s case was that his grant funding was impacted by the bloggers’ statements. But the figures he presented at trial were incorrect.

For example, Mann’s attorneys presented an exhibit that said the scientist had a $9.7 million grant, but the budget of the grant was only $112,000.

The misrepresentation was “an affront to the Court’s authority and an attack on the integrity of the proceedings,” Irving said in his March opinion.

Last year, Mann appeared on CNN to declare that the pre-summer heat wave was a result of climate change: “This is a glimpse of not only what our future will look like, but in fact, it will look quite a bit worse than this,” he said. “[A]ll of this gets worse if we continue pumping carbon pollution into the atmosphere and warming up the planet.”

MORE: Petty climate professor one step closer to destroying National Review with frivolous lawsuit

IMAGE CAPTION & CREDIT: Michael Mann interviewed on book ‘Our Fragile Moment’ in 2023; CBS News/YouTube

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