Conservative publication launches $1 million lawsuit against celebrity climate scientist

The National Review is suing Penn State climate celebrity scientist Michael Mann for $1 million. “We cannot recover the time and effort that Mann has wasted, but we can recover more than a million of the dollars that we have lost defending our unalienable right to free speech,” the Review’s editors wrote Wednesday.

Mann won a defamation suit against two conservative writers who had criticized his “hockey stick” graph, which other climate scientists have questioned. Mann and his colleagues say the research demonstrates a sharp rise in unprecedented temperatures in the past few decades.

In 2012, Rand Simberg posted an article on a Competitive Enterprise Institute blog that compared a Penn State investigation into Mann’s research practices to the university's investigation into assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who was found guilty of sexually abusing 10 young boys over the course of 15 years. Mark Steyn quoted from Simberg’s piece in an article published in the "Corner," a Review blog, and Steyn called Mann’s research “fraudulent.”

After Mann threatened to sue Steyn, National Review editor Richard Lowry, according to the Review editors, disputed Mann’s characterization of Steyn’s criticism as “criminally fraudulent.” Steyn, Lowry argued, was stating that Mann’s research was “intellectually bogus and wrong.”

A D.C. jury awarded Mann $1 million, the bulk of which were punitive and not compensatory damages, meaning the jury did not think the writers’ statements harmed Mann financially and the settlements were meant to punish the defendants. 

Originally, the National Review and Competitive Enterprise Institute were named in Mann’s suit, but in 2001, a D.C. Superior Court ruled that those publications couldn’t be held liable.

The Review had the case against the publication dismissed under D.C.’s Anti-SLAPP Act. Anti-SLAPP laws are state laws that provide a means for defendants in libel lawsuits to have cases dismissed at an early stage, and in some cases the plaintiffs in libel suits who lose anti-SLAPP suits can be made to repay legal expenses of the defendants.

In dismissing Mann’s suit against the Review, the publication’s editors explained that the court confirmed Lowry’s post was an “expression of opinion protected by the First Amendment,” and Anti-SLAPP laws are designed to shield such speech from libel suits meant to silence critics.

Before the Review could seek damages in their successful Anti-SLAPP suit, the case had to be resolved, which the judgment against Steyn and Simberg did. The Review is hoping to recover from Mann $1,037,247.41 in legal costs.

Mann did not return requests for comment.

The Review reported that they had obtained emails during the discovery process that showed that Mann had promised to launch a “major lawsuit” that would “ruin National Review.”

“When we prevail, it will mark the first time during this entire affair that there have been any consequences whatsoever for Michael Mann’s disgraceful conduct,” the Review editors wrote.