Free Republic

Being accused of "molesting" data to promote climate alarmism is not worth $1 million in punitive damages, a judge ruled Tuesday in a 13-year-old defamation lawsuit that could have bankrupted the nation's most venerable conservative magazine. The District of Columbia Superior Court slashed the seven-figure punitive damages awarded to University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann, best known for his "hockey-stick" graph on climate change, to $5,000, rejecting Mann's "entire rationale" for preserving the $1 million award: "deterrence and punishment." Just the News covered the trial. Judge Alfred Irving wrote that Mann "presented no persuasive evidence suggesting that he suffered...

Conservative pundit and radio host Mark Steyn has been ordered by a jury to pay a former Penn State professor and "climate scientist" $1 million in damages in a defamation lawsuit about blog posts, published in 2012, criticizing the professor's work. via AP:The jury in Superior Court of the District of Columbia found that [think tank fellow Rand] Simberg and Steyn made false statements, awarding Mann $1 in compensatory damages from each writer. It awarded punitive damages of $1,000 from Simberg and $1 million from Steyn, after finding that the pair made their statements with “maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance...