01/27/2014 19:53kruijs

A judge for the D.C. Superior Court on Thursday refused to let libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and conservative news site National Review off the hook from a defamation lawsuit brought by climatologist Michael Mann, saying the sites’ musings about the accuracy of Mann’s research may not be protected by the First Amendment.

Mann had sued the outlets in 2012, claiming they published defamatory articles accusing him of academic fraud and comparing him to a convicted child molester, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Specifically, Mann alleged that CEI published — and then National Review republished — an article calling Mann “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.”

Judge Frederick H. Weisberg on Thursday ruled that while “opinions and rhetorical hyperbole” are protected speech under the First Amendment, accusing a climate scientist of lying about his seemingly factual data is serious enough to warrant defamation claims.

“The allegedly defamatory aspect of this sentence is the statement that plaintiff ‘molested and tortured data,’ not the rhetorically hyperbolic comparison to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky,” Judge Weisberg wrote.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/24/3205111/mann-defamation-lawsuit/

   01/22/2014 08:08kruijs

On December 19 the District of Columbia Court of Appeals dismissed as moot an appeal by National Review and Competitive Enterprise Institute of the trial court's denial of a motion to dismiss, on the grounds that a motion to dismiss an amended defamation complaint filed by Dr. Mann is still pending before Judge Weisberg in DC Superior Court. In this latest development in the procedurally somewhat tangled case, the Court of Appeals made no ruling on the substance of the defamation case.

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/12/30/dc-court-of-appeals-dismisses-an-appeal-by-defendants/

   07/23/2013 06:15kruijs

A year ago, Penn State was reeling in the wake of revelations that its athletic program had covered up serial abuse by one of its football coaches. A blogger at the pro-free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute used that situation as an opportunity to suggest that the university was covering up malfeasance by one of its faculty members, climate scientist Michael Mann. The accusations of research fraud were then reiterated by a blogger at the conservative publication National Review. After a bit of back-and-forth between Mann and the two organizations, Mann filed a defamation suit.

Both National Review and the CEI attempted to have the case thrown out. They argued that it met the SLAPP definition of an attempt to silence critics and that Mann's case fell far short of the standards of defamation of a public figure. Now, a judge has denied both of these attempts, allowing the defamation trial to move forward.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/07/hockey-stick-graph-climate-researchers-defamation-suit-to-go-forward/