Way back in the ancient year of 2012 — before this blog had even been started — Penn State climate “scientist” Michael Mann brought a lawsuit for defamation against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, as well as against two websites (National Review and CEI) that had hosted the blog posts of those two individuals.

Mann asserted that his reputation had been damaged by the Steyn and Simberg posts, which had compared Mann to fellow Penn Stater Jerry Sandusky. The point of comparison was that Penn State had investigated and cleared both men around the same time over allegations of misconduct — scientific misconduct in the case of Mann, sexual misconduct in the case of Sandusky.

In the succeeding years, the case went through a truly unbelievable history of procedural twists and turns, including multiple motions to dismiss and appeals. The case finally reached trial in January 2024. Readers who are at all familiar with the case will recall that the jury awarded only $1 of compensatory damages against each defendant, but awarded punitive damages of $1000 against Simberg and $1 million against Steyn.

And then the case disappeared almost completely from the news for over a year. What, you may have wondered, was happening? The answer is “post-trial motions.”

As I write this on the afternoon of Thursday February 8, the jury is deliberating in the Mann v. Steyn case. They could come back at any time, so I’ll try to write this quickly in order that the post is not obsolete already when it is posted.

The last day of trial, yesterday, was devoted to jury instructions and closing arguments. Unfortunately, I had to miss the opening argument from Mann’s counsel John Williams. But I was then able to listen to almost the entire argument of Simberg’s counsel Victoria Weatherford, the entire argument by Mark Steyn on his own behalf, and the entire final rebuttal from Mr. Williams.

My overall comment on the closings of Ms. Weatherford and Mr. Steyn is that they were straightforward reviews of the evidence, or lack thereof, as it applied to each element of the claims, as those had been outlined by the judge in the jury instructions. Because Mann had presented little to know relevant evidence, the closings were quite devastating. Ms. Weatherford’s approach was more an item-by-item review of how plaintiff had failed to prove each element, while Steyn focused more on a few particularly noteworthy issues; but both were well within norms for this type of argument.

By contrast, Williams’s rebuttal was almost entirely off point and/or improper. He drew repeated (and correct) objections, several of them sustained, ultimately forcing the judge to re-read to the jury the entire instruction as to the elements and burdens of proof for defamation in order to correct an incorrect statement of the law made by Mr. Williams.

The trial of Michael Mann versus Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg is nearing its conclusion in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

The last two days, Monday and Tuesday, have seen the presentation of the guts of the defense case. These were the main witnesses:

Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, authors of a series of papers in the early 2000s that dissected Mann’s work and discovered several serious flaws;

two members of the Penn State “Inquiry” Committee, that investigated Mann after the release of the ClimateGate emails in late 2009, and made no adverse finding against Mann (Mann has claimed that he was “exonerated”);

and Eugene Wahl, a climate scientist and collaborator of Mann who had deleted certain emails that were subject to FOIA requests after Mann forwarded him a request to do so.