Today in the District of Columbia Superior Court, Mark and his co-defendant Rand Simberg in Mann vs Steyn were obliged to respond to a Memorandum in Support of Motion of Michael E. Mann, Ph.D, John B. Williams and Peter J. Fontaine to Reconsider or to Alter or Amend Award of Sanctions.
Readers may recall that a few months ago, Judge Alfred Irving ordered sanctions against Mann and two of his lawyers for "bad faith trial misconduct." The in-depth analysis in his ruling was devastating to Mann:
Setting aside questions of credibility or even perjury...
Indeed, perjury - such as what we believe Mann engaged in and his lawyers suborned - is considered a crime in most jurisdictions. You'd think he would be relieved with a little financial sanction instead of jail time.
But the one thing you can count on from the "Clime Syndicate" - (courtesy of "A Disgrace to the Profession": The World's Scientists ~in their own words~ On Michael E. Mann, His Hockey Stick, And Their Damage to Science. Autographed copies available here) - is a total lack of accountability for their actions.
Instead, they Mannsplained:
In considering these rules, moreover, the Court engaged in its own analysis of the evidence well beyond what the parties argued in the motions for sanctions, and in the process reached erroneous conclusions that are inconsistent with evidence the Court might not have possessed or appreciated.
The Court rejected simple and benign explanations of the Attorneys' conduct, which are corroborated by overwhelming evidence, and instead concluded that two longtime members of the bar deliberately made false statements to the Court and introduced false evidence—even though the Movants themselves had identified the 'false' evidence, fully disclosed it to adverse counsel long before trial, tried to correct it before and during trial, and affirmatively corrected it on multiple occasions long before the jury deliberated.
So says the lawyers for the lawyers (and Mann) in their ~dripping in condescension~ memorandum to the court seeking reversal of its order.
Oh, and they say they never saw this coming:
Movants were stunned by the opinion and order—coming as it did more than a full year after the issue was raised....
(and) the Court did not give fair warning that it was contemplating imposing sanctions against Dr. Mann...
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt...
That's where our dream team of Christopher Bartolomucci and Justin Miller start in response to Bad-Faith Sanction Denier Mann:
First, Mann and his attorneys' feigned surprise at this Court's decision to impose sanctions on them is not credible. This Court confirmed that the sanctions motion remained pending in its Order Setting Post-Trial Briefing Schedule (Feb. 9, 2024).
When Plaintiffs sought consent to file a status report nunc pro tunc with the D.C. Court of Appeals, Steyn required them to include the omitted motion from their status report... Since July 2024, Plaintiffs have filed monthly status reports that Defendant Mark Steyn's Motion for Sanctions for Bad-Faith Trial Misconduct remained pending in the trial court...
In fact, the day before this Court granted the sanctions award, Plaintiffs told the Court of Appeals that because this Court's March 4 order had not referenced Steyn's motion, that they (erroneously) believed the motion was moot.
Mann and his attorneys had plenty of notice.
And, as for that evidence the Court might not have possessed or appreciated?
There is none.
...Because Mann has not provided any new information, and his arguments reflect a tripling down (not a misunderstanding or clear error or anything similar), this Court should deny his motion for reconsideration.
What about those simple and benign explanations?
Mann's motion for reconsideration only underscores what this Court already found in its order:
(1) Mann and his attorneys knew that the dollar amounts in the exhibits they presented were wrong,
(2) the charts should not have been presented to the jury in the way Mann and his attorneys presented them, and
(3) the time for Mann to correct those misleading exhibits was before his attorneys sat down....
His inability to quantify his damages is a product of his case never being about rectifying actual damages. Mann's motion merely continues to double- and triple-down on his and his attorneys' bad faith misconduct.
Finally, our team sums it up:
Mann's motion to reconsider has only compounded the time wasted by the parties because of Mann and his attorneys' misrepresentations. This Court was correct to sanction them for those misrepresentations, and, as explained, this new motion to reconsider is meritless. Accordingly, Steyn should be granted his attorney's fees spent responding to it.
Mark's co-defendant Simberg also weighed in by systematically reviewing the history of the evidence that culminated in Mann et al presenting false data to the jury on a big poster board. Simberg's team opens:
The centerpiece of Dr. Mann's damages case was his purported inability to obtain grants, and the Court reasonably expected Dr. Mann and his attorneys to take care in presenting the critical evidence on his grants funding.
Instead, what the Court observed was Dr. Mann's counsel presenting as accurate a large demonstrative exhibit with materially false dollar figures that gave an in flated impression of Dr. Mann's damages, and then counsel publishing that exhibit to the jury while Dr. Mann sat next to the false exhibit without ever correcting it.
It fell to defense counsel to set the record straight on this hugely consequential issue by correcting the falsehoods that Dr. Mann and his attorneys presented to the jury.
Amen! That is exactly what happened - which Simberg lays out in careful detail in his response. If you're into detailed forensic take downs of liars, this is another good read.
We will keep you apprised of any further developments on the sanctions and the case in general. As always, thank you for continuing to stand by Mark.
