By now I’m sure everyone who reads this blog knows that there’s been a couple of extraordinary rulings in the Mann v Steyn case. On March 4th, Judge Irving reduced Mann’s punitive award from Mark Steyn from $1 million to $5,000. It should be noted that punitive awards are supposed to be no more than 10 times damages which in Mann’s case amounted to $1.00, so that’s still too high. To put my own spin on it, that’s still a multiple of half a million percent! Mann was also ordered to pay expenses to National Review of $1/2 million.

Well, yesterday there was another judgment:

The Court, pursuant to its inherent authority, must grant Defendants’ requests for expenses they incurred at trial in responding to Dr. Mann and his counsel’s bad faith misconduct

Ironically, “bad faith” is one of Mann’s favorite phrases. What this is about is Mann and his lawyers misrepresenting how much he claimed to have lost in grant money. In Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney’s podcast series, Climate Change on Trial, in the last 7 minutes of episode 8, they reenact Victoria Weatherford’s shredding of Mann on the witness stand on this issue. At 11 minutes in on episode 10, they do Judge Irving’s chewing out of Mann’s lawyers. This latest ruling could be very serious. I’m reading speculations of new charges and disbarment for Mann’s lawyers. But the big questions that I have are: Is the press going to report on these two rulings? Is Mann going to go on his merry way being the world’s premier climate pundit?

I think the general public, at least anyone who knows about this case, is going to go on believing Mann won and got $1 million. In fact, the biggest impression they will have is the picture (featured image for this post) of Mann walking out of the courtroom with his goofy, triumphant grin. This image is likely to become another icon in the so called climate wars just like his completely discredited, utter crap hockey stick graph. Is Mann going to keep his sweet gig? McIntyre and McKittrick’s papers, a congressional investigation, the Wegman Report, Climategate and the Nobel Prize laugh fest haven’t stopped him.

On a final note, Mann has a book signing coming up on April 7th. I note that it says, “Free and Open to the Public, Lecture” and “Q&A”. I wonder if Las Vegas is taking odds on whether this will happen?