Competitive Enterprise Institute v. Mann

Two years after the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled that climate scientist Michael Mann could proceed with defamation claims against the authors and publishers of online articles, the appellate court responded to a petition for rehearing by issuing an amended opinion with only minor adjustments—the addition of one footnote and the revision of another. The appellate court thereby reaffirmed its conclusion that a reasonable jury could find that statements in two of the articles were false, defamatory, published by appellants to third parties, and made with actual malice. The articles accused Mann of scientific misconduct and compared his alleged misconduct to the conduct of Jerry Sandusky, a football coach at Penn State who was convicted of child sexual abuse.

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals upheld in part and reversed in part a trial court’s denial of special motions to dismiss defamation claims made by the climate scientist Michael Mann against three authors of online articles and Competitive Enterprise Institute and National Review, Inc., which published the articles on their websites. The Court of Appeals also reversed the denial of special motions to dismiss Mann’s claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress because the appellate court concluded that Mann had not demonstrated that he was likely to succeed in proving that he suffered severe emotional distress. The articles at issue in the action asserted that Mann had been “shown” to have behaved in a “deceptive” and “most unscientific manner” because he “molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science”; that he engaged in “academic and scientific misconduct”; that an investigation by his employer Pennsylvania State University was a “whitewash” or “cover-up”; and that a lawsuit threatened by Mann was “fraudulent” or “intellectually bogus and wrong.” The articles also likened Penn State’s investigation of Mann’s work to the university’s investigation regarding its former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, who was convicted of child sexual abuse. The appellate court concluded that a reasonable jury could find that statements in two of the articles were false, defamatory, published by appellants to third parties, and made with actual malice. In finding that Mann had met his burden of showing that a jury could find “actual malice” with respect to two of the articles, the appellate court said it would be for a jury to determine the credibility of the appellants’ assertions of “honest belief” in the truth of their statements and whether the belief was maintained “in reckless disregard of its probable falsity.” It would also be for a jury to consider the appellants’ objections to multiple investigation reports that found no evidence of misconduct by Mann.