{"id":423548,"date":"2026-01-28T09:41:01","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T08:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=423548"},"modified":"2026-01-28T09:41:03","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T08:41:03","slug":"mann-v-steyn-finally-ready-for-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=423548","title":{"rendered":"Mann v. Steyn: Finally Ready for Appeal?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Manhattan Contrarian<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Francis Menton<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Way back in 2012, climate \u201cscientist\u201d Michael Mann, then at Penn State University, sued four defendants for defamation. The four were commentators Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, who had written blog posts about Mann, and National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, entities which had respectively hosted the Steyn and Simberg posts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The occasion for the Steyn and Simberg posts was that independent investigator Louis Freeh had issued a Report that had castigated Penn State President Graham Spanier for having whitewashed the conduct of the university\u2019s assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, in a sex abuse scandal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steyn and Simberg had compared Spanier\u2019s exoneration of Sandusky to his exoneration two years previously of the university\u2019s star climate science professor, Mann, after the so-called \u201cClimateGate\u201d emails<\/a> had shown Mann deeply involved in data manipulation schemes to support the narrative of climate apocalypse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here we are now in 2026, more than 13 years later. The Mann v. Steyn<\/em> case has gone through a truly incredible procedural history, including multiple motions to dismiss, two appeals to the D.C. Court of Appeals (different from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals), a certiorari petition to the Supreme Court, a jury trial after remand (in 2024), and a bevy of post-trial motions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have previously had numerous posts covering this case, including the trial and subsequent developments. My most recent post was this one from March 2025,<\/a> covering decisions by the trial judge<\/a> (Alfred Irving of the D.C. Superior Court) on most of the post-trial motions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few days ago, on January 22, the Judge Irving finally issued a decision<\/a> that appears to resolve the last of the post-trial motions. Most notably, the judge has now put numbers on the amounts that Mann will be required to pay to Steyn and Simberg for having presented false evidence at trial and thus having put those two through the effort of disproving the false evidence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the amounts are quite modest in the context of the vast resources that have gone into fighting this battle: Mann is ordered to pay $11,404.80 to Steyn, and $16,762.82 to Simberg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I reported in my March 2025 post, the high point of the case for Mann came in February 2024, when the jury returned its verdict. Although the jury awarded Mann only one dollar of \u201cnominal\u201d damages against each of Steyn and Simberg, it awarded $1 million of punitive damages against Steyn, and $1,000 of punitive damages against Simberg. (National Review and CEI had previously been dismissed from the case on motions.). Mann and his media acolytes immediately took to gloating on social media about his great victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But before long the \u201cvictory\u201d turned to dust. In January 2025 Judge Irving awarded National Review<\/a> some $540,820.21 in fees and costs from Mann, under a D.C. statute that entitles prevailing defendants in defamation cases to recover their fees. On March 4, 2025, in his decision on post-trial motions<\/a>, the judge reduced the punitive damages award as against Steyn from $1 million to $5000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then on March 12, 2025, Judge Irving issued another order on a motion for sanctions against Mann<\/a>, in which he lit into Mann for having presented to the jury false evidence of his supposed damages. The March 12, 2025, Order invited Steyn and Simberg to submit evidence as to how much Mann\u2019s bad faith conduct had cost them in incremental fees and costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now in his January 22 Order, Judge Irving not only puts numbers on the award of sanctions but also provides a new summary of the misconduct that led him to award sanctions against Mann. A piece of that summary is worth quoting here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Dr. Mann throughout this litigation complained that he suffered lost grant funding directly stemming from the defamatory statements of Messrs. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simberg and Steyn, while providing very little in the way of specifics about the dollar amounts of his losses directly attributable to the statements (such as corroborating testimony from percipient witnesses), all while promising to illuminate the Court at trial. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At trial, Dr. Mann elected through his attorneys to present to the jury a blown-up demonstrative, without redaction or explanation, a demonstrative intentionally prepared for its use at trial, which included a budget (loss) amount of $9,713,924.00, when the correct amount, previously corrected during a third round of discovery, was $112,000. . . <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Plaintiff and his attorneys find nothing wrong with such practice, the Court simply cannot condone such bad faith litigation tactics.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s fair to say that Mann\u2019s bad faith trial tactics got Judge Irving very, very angry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as I can tell, this Order resolves the last remaining issues in this case at the trial court level. At Steyn\u2019s website, the comment is \u201cNext stop in Mann vs Steyn? The Court of Appeals.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, some other things have changed during the passing years. In October 2025 National Review put up a piece headlined \u201cMichael Mann finally goes away<\/a>,\u201d in which they report that \u201cMann has finally dropped any claims against us.\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The brief piece contains no information as to any payment of money from one side to the other, or what happened to the $500,000+ award of sanctions that NR had recovered against Mann. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is possible that there was a payment of some sort that the parties agreed to keep confidential, but my inference would be that NR walked away from the sanctions award in order to avoid further years’ worth of appeals. After all, Mann\u2019s efforts appear to be funded by wealthy backers with essentially infinite deep pockets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also while this case has been endlessly going on, in 2022 Mann moved his base of operations from Penn State to the University of Pennsylvania. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There he flaunts the ridiculous title of \u201cPresidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science and founding director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media.\u201d Well, University of Pennsylvania, you now have a \u201cPresidential Distinguished Professor\u201d who has been adjudicated to have lied under oath to fabricate a damages case, and to have engaged in \u201cbad faith litigation tactics.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet they continue to support him as some kind of hero, I guess because he is on the right team. Other Penn professors who are actually serious scholars but find themselves not on the right team (e.g., Stanley Goldfarb, Amy Wax) get completely different treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Way back in 2012, climate \u201cscientist\u201d Michael Mann, then at Penn State University, sued four defendants for defamation. The four were commentators Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, who had written blog posts about Mann, and National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, entities which had respectively hosted the Steyn and Simberg posts. The occasion for the Steyn and Simberg posts was that independent investigator Louis Freeh had issued a Report that had castigated Penn State President Graham Spanier for having whitewashed the conduct of the university\u2019s assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, in a sex abuse scandal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":423551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvY2xpbWF0ZS1zY2llbmNlLnByZXNzXC93cC1jb250ZW50XC91cGxvYWRzXC8yMDI2XC8wMVwvME1pY2hhZWwtTWFubi0xMDI0eDUxMi5qcGciLCJ0eHQiOiJNYW5uIHYuIFN0ZXluOiBGaW5hbGx5IFJlYWR5IGZvciBBcHBlYWw_IiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiZm9udCI6IiIsImJsb2dfaWQiOjE1NTgxMjQ0OX0.AuCiracRx3lcurko8ytQYA8Jecnx3j6jpoJ-j7Q0Z60MQ"},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691840965,691829604,691833864,691818215],"class_list":{"0":"post-423548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climategate-emails-2","9":"tag-climate-lawsuits","10":"tag-mark-steyn-and-rand-simberg","11":"tag-michael-mann","13":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0Michael-Mann.jpg?fit=1440%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1Mbq","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":300936,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=300936","url_meta":{"origin":423548,"position":0},"title":"Jury finds in favor of Michael Mann in defamation lawsuit against Mark Steyn, Rand Simberg","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"10\/02\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The jury deliberated for close to a full day before reaching its decision.","rel":"","context":"In \"climate scientist\"","block_context":{"text":"climate scientist","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-scientist"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/01fcbbecee0e08e62e7f9fe4b63a17fa5.jpg?fit=1200%2C600&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/01fcbbecee0e08e62e7f9fe4b63a17fa5.jpg?fit=1200%2C600&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/01fcbbecee0e08e62e7f9fe4b63a17fa5.jpg?fit=1200%2C600&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/01fcbbecee0e08e62e7f9fe4b63a17fa5.jpg?fit=1200%2C600&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/01fcbbecee0e08e62e7f9fe4b63a17fa5.jpg?fit=1200%2C600&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":299594,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=299594","url_meta":{"origin":423548,"position":1},"title":"Mann vs. Steyn: Climate Trial of the Century Week 3 – Guest: Ann McElhinney","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"03\/02\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"On episode 96 of Climate Change Roundtable, special guest Ann McElhinney joins The Heartland Institute\u2019s Anthony Watts, H. Sterling Burnett, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely to break down the latest bombshell moments of the trial. We are sure to mention the devastating testimony on Thursday of renowned statistician Abraham Wyner\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate Trial\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate Trial","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-trial"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/0Screenshot-2024-02-03-125744.png?fit=1200%2C633&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/0Screenshot-2024-02-03-125744.png?fit=1200%2C633&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/0Screenshot-2024-02-03-125744.png?fit=1200%2C633&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/0Screenshot-2024-02-03-125744.png?fit=1200%2C633&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/0Screenshot-2024-02-03-125744.png?fit=1200%2C633&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":373736,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=373736","url_meta":{"origin":423548,"position":2},"title":"Mark Steyn and the Reversal of Fortune","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"05\/04\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"A year ago, Michael Mann was riding high after winning his 12-year-old lawsuit against journalist\/pundit Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg over comments sharply critical of Mann\u2019s famed \u201chockey stick\u201d graph. 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Steyn","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"31\/01\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Way back in October 2012, climate alarmist and activist Michael Mann brought a libel suit against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg for allegedly defamatory blog posts that the two had written a few months previously.","rel":"","context":"In \"hockey stick graph\"","block_context":{"text":"hockey stick graph","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=hockey-stick-graph"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/0Michael-Mann-Mark-Steyn.png?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/0Michael-Mann-Mark-Steyn.png?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/0Michael-Mann-Mark-Steyn.png?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/0Michael-Mann-Mark-Steyn.png?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=423548"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423557,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423548\/revisions\/423557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/423551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=423548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=423548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=423548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}