Climate scientist awarded more than $1 million in damages from conservative writers who defamed his work | CNN Business
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A jury has awarded climate scientist Michael Mann $1 million in a defamation lawsuit he brought against a former scholar and a media personality who lampooned Mann’s work.

From Mother Jones:

In 2012—after writers for National Review and a prominent conservative think tank accused him of fraud and compared him to serial child molester Jerry Sandusky—climate scientist Michael Mann took the bold step of filing a defamation suit. The defendants moved to have the case thrown out, citing a Washington, DC, law that shields journalists from frivolous litigation. But on Wednesday, DC Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg rejected the motion, opening the way for a trial.

According to Guardian, Mann’s lawsuit was tossed out:

The litigation targets two writers: Rand Simberg, analyst at the rightwing thinktank Competitive Enterprise Institute, who published a piece comparing Mann to a convicted serial child molester, and the National Review blogger Mark Steyn, who in a blogpost favorably quoted Simberg and called Mann’s research “fraudulent”. (Mann originally went after both publishers as well, but in 2021 a court ruled that neither the Competitive Enterprise Institute nor National Review could be held responsible for the attacks.)

Seems a bit fucked up that Competitive Enterprise Institute (an extremist right-wing lobby that pushes climate denial propaganda) was let off the hook for defamation. But yet a person working for CEI (Rand Simberg) can still be accountable for defamation. Is this a perverse side-effect of #CitizensUnited, I wonder?

Glad Michael Mann got justice but CEI should have taken the hit AFAICT.