by Chris Black
Disagreeing with someone is not defamation. This is abject nonsense, it is a judge “legislating from the bench,” taking away from basic First Amendment freedoms through an absurd ruling.
Yes, a jury decided, but it was the duty of the judge to dismiss this gibberish as an obvious attack on constitutionally-protected speech rights.
This is actually, somehow, even more extreme than the Alex Jones “defamation” cases. These courts are going through, step-by-step, and creating entire categories of political speech that are no longer allowed.
CNN:
A jury has awarded climate scientist Michael Mann more than $1 million in a defamation lawsuit he brought against a former scholar and a media personality who lampooned Mann’s work.
The legal battle has been ongoing for more than a decade. Mann initially filed a lawsuit in 2012, after Rand Simberg, a former scholar for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Mark Steyn, a TV and radio personality who wrote for the National Review, wrote blog posts ridiculing Mann’s scientific research that warned of rising temperatures, and compared him to Jerry Sandusky, the former Pennsylvania State football coach who was convicted of child molestation.
…
A jury in the Washington, DC, Superior Court civil case awarded Mann $1 million in punitive damages and a dollar from each defendant in compensatory damages.
…
“I hope this verdict sends a message that falsely attacking climate scientists is not protected speech,” Mann said in a statement posted on X. Representatives for the defendants did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
It seems that every week since that fateful day in August of 2017, America loses more of its freedom of speech.
Much is lost through the ever-intensifying digital censorship, but perhaps more damning are the civil lawsuits, where courts are simply deciding that entire categories of speech are illegal.