Mark Steyn Goes to Trial
29th October 2023
After more than 11 long years, jury selection in Michael Mann’s defamation case against Mark Steyn and others begins on Monday. I had lost track of this case as it wended its tortuous way through the courts, and tried to catch up with it by watching Mark’s deposition, the two short halves of which you can see here and here. The deposition does not lack for entertainment value, but as I watched it, I wondered, how can this terrible case possibly be going to trial? How could Mark Steyn not have gotten summary judgment?
The case arises out of a post that Mark wrote at the Corner on National Review quite a few years ago. He quoted Rand Simberg, who called Michael Mann the Jerry Sandusky of climate science (both Mann and Sandusky were employed by, and investigated by, Penn State). Mark added a few comments of his own about Mann’s absurd hockey stick. The gist of Mark’s brief post was that Mann’s hockey stick was a fraud. Which it was.