Irony alert:

"Mann has been fighting anti-science forces for almost 20 years. He is thankful that the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund exists because it assisted him with his legal issues. But he also sees it as an important resource for researchers who find themselves subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and state open records requests, and who are unfamiliar with their legal rights. When young researchers are subjected to FOIA requests, Mann puts them in touch with the Defense Fund.

“It’s important to fight back both against these vexatious demands to get a hold of our personal emails and intimidate us, and the efforts to tie us up in vexatious legal matters that take away from the time we have to do research and teach and do outreach,” said Mann."

https://www.csldf.org/2017/07/20/perspectives-scientists-become-targets-michael-mann/

Being awarded the title of Vexatious Litigant is possible in the United States, but not many States have chosen the option, so far. It is not just a UK and British Commonwealth solution for unjustified legal threats, intimidation and bullying

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation
"Vexatious litigation is legal action which is brought solely to harass or subdue an adversary. It may take the form of a primary frivolous lawsuit or may be the repetitive, burdensome, and unwarranted filing of meritless motions in a matter which is otherwise a meritorious cause of action. Filing vexatious litigation is considered an abuse of the judicial process and may result in sanctions against the offender."

"A single action, even a frivolous one, is usually not enough to raise a litigant to the level of being declared vexatious. Rather, a pattern of frivolous legal actions is typically required to rise to the level of vexatious. Repeated and severe instances by a single lawyer or firm can result in eventual disbarment"

"The first such law outside the British Isles, the Supreme Court Act, 1927 was passed in Australia nearly thirty years later. This too was prompted by the behaviour of an individual, Rupert Millane.[4] The first vexatious litigant law in the United States was enacted in California in 1963. By 2007 four more US states had passed similar legislation: Florida, Hawaii, Ohio, and Texas.[2]"

Mann loses and doesn't pay up - be like Phil Clarke?

fred,

This Thread is "The Moral and Intellectual Poverty of Climate Alarm "

Climate Science is at risk of financial poverty if the Taxpayer Tap gets turned off.

If the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund runs out of money to pay the fees of their own Lawyers, how will all the other costs incurred by vexatious litigation be paid?

Mann has received a few Taxpayer Funded Dollars, but his carefully maintained and censored Wikipedia entry doesn't elaborate further. For example:

"Between 1999 and 2010 he served as principal or co-principal investigator on five research projects funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and four more funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). He was also co-investigator on other projects funded by the NOAA, NSF, Department of Energy, United States Agency for International Development, and the Office of Naval Research.[48]"

Oh, Clipe, you believe Mark Steyn, how cute.

Mann was not ordered to pay Ball's legal fees, that's just a plain lie.

Phil, we've been through this before. An out and out lie? I think not.

From the judgment:

"[16] I find that, because of the delay, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for there to be a fair trial for the defendant. This is a relatively straightforward defamation action and should have been resolved long before now. That it has not been
resolved is because the plaintiff has not given it the priority that he should have. In the circumstances, justice requires that the action be dismissed and, accordingly, I do hereby dismiss the action for delay."

"[18] Those are my reasons [for finding against Mann, and dismissing his claim against Ball due to Mann's delay], counsel. Costs?
[19] MR. SCHERR: I would, of course, ask for costs for the defendant, given the dismissal of the action.
[20] MR. MCCONCHIE: Costs follow the event. I have no quarrel with that.
[21] THE COURT: All right. I agree. The costs will follow the event, so the defendant will have his costs of the application and also the costs of the action, since the action is dismissed."

https://www.steynonline.com/documents/9740.pdf

Court costs, not solicitor's fees.

Court did not find that any of Ball’s defenses were valid. The Court did not find that any of my claims were *not* valid… The provision in the Court’s order relating to costs does NOT mean that I will pay Ball’s legal fees… In making his application based on delay, Ball effectively told the world he did not want a verdict on the real issues in the lawsuit

https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1164910044414189568

Also note the Judge specifically made no ruling on the merits of the case

The plaintiff, Dr. Mann, and the defendant, Dr. Ball, have dramatically different opinions on climate change. I do not intend to address those differences

So it's more ad hominem - perhaps a case of playing the Mann rather than the Ball ;-)

The Court did not find that any of my claims were *not* valid…
https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1164910044414189568
Jun 27, 2020 at 3:10 PM Phil Clarke

Can you explain the legal validity of Mann's opinion, as you seem to accept it?

The case was dismissed at Ball's request, due to excessive delay by Mann in progressing his suit - so none of the claims of fact, either from plaintiff or defendent were ever ruled on by the court.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/28/1881956/-Tim-Ball-Pleads-For-Mercy-As-An-Irrelevant-Sick-Old-Man-Gets-It-Declares-Victory

Jun 27, 2020 at 4:23 PM Phil Clarke
You are quoting Mann's opinion typed up by DailyKos underneath a pictorial of Mann's Hockey Stick devoid of MWP and LIA.

Sorry Phil, but we've been here before, and you're displaying the same misunderstanding that you showed last time. When one side asks the Court to award costs, and the Court agrees, that is not simply an award of Court costs (there are no Court costs to be paid other than Court fees, which even in these days of massively increased Court costs, pale into insignificance compared to the scale of the legal fees); rather it is an award that one party pays the other party's fees. The word "costs" is simply legal shorthand understand by Judges and the parties' lawyers alike, and it includes legal fees.

As I've explained to you in the past, in this country at least (and probably it's largely the same in the US) the successful party won't get ALL their costs (i.e. legal fees) paid by the unsuccessful party, as the Court will usually decide that some costs were incurred unnecessarily, and therefore it would be unfair for the losing party to pay fees unnecessarily incurred. In a particularly egregious case, the Court might make an award of indemnity costs, such that the successful party has all their costs paid by the unsuccessful party, but that is not the case in Mann -v- Ball.

That said, the effect of the Court Order is that Mann WILL have to pay a substantial proportion of Ball's legal fees. As for:

"The provision in the Court’s order relating to costs does NOT mean that I will pay Ball’s legal fees…", well, that can only mean that Mann is either lying; or that he will put himself in contempt of Court by not complying with a Court Order; or (and this is the one I suspect to be the case) that he is being economical with the truth, the truth being that he will not personally pay the costs, rather they will be paid by the Climate Science Legal Defense [sic] Fund. But I've told you this before, too.

Finally, as for "Also note the Judge specifically made no ruling on the merits of the case", well, that's a straw man, if ever there was one. Has anyone on this thread said that Mann lost his case against Ball on the merits? No, they haven't. This latter part of the thread has been about Mann's increasingly unsuccessful attempts to delay the litigation he initiates.

The case was heard in British Columbia, under Canadian Law. I am not a lawyer, much less a Canadian lawyer but as I understand it the judge has quite a degree of discretion about the amount of costs. Whatever, a mere footnote.

I doubt Dr Mann is overly bothered. He already prevailed in a substantive part of the case. Ball's libel was published by the Frontier Center and Dr Mann sued both Ball and the FC. The latter immediately retracted the piece and apologised for "untrue and disparaging" comments, adding

"we now accept that it was wrong to publish allegations by others that Mr. Mann did not comply with ethical standards and wrong to suggest that Dr Mann was guilty of any dishonesty concerning his 1998 and 1999 which produced the so-called 'hockey stick' temperature graph.

The Daily Kos?

... inversion central - turn stuff upside down - it's what they do....

"As Americans rise up in defense of Black lives, Black protest anthems resonate more than ever"

rise up like Susan Rosenberg

Jun 27, 2020 at 7:55 PM Phil Clarke
The Climate Science Defense Fund has presumably paid Mann's Legal Costs in pursuing others. Has it accepted financial liability for the costs that a Court has ordered Mann to pay?

Hardly a footnote, Phil, rather it's a fundamental point, and you were wrong. Acceptance of that fact would be nice.

Ball's costs will be substantial, and Mann has been ordered to pay them. There will probably/may already have been wrangling about just what proportion of Ball's costs Mann has to pay, but I can guarantee that the outcome will be an order to pay a substantial proportion of them. The fact that he personally might not pay them at all, thanks to having financial backers, ought to raise eyebrows, yet you brush it all under the carpet.

Oh, I am willing to stand corrected over whether Dr Mann will have to pay a proportion of Ball's costs, though I note Ball himself qualified the award:

Michael Mann’s case against me was dismissed this morning by the BC Supreme Court and they awarded me [court] costs.  

Which is an odd formulation that I took to mean, um, court costs.

Whatever. I fail to see the significance to wider issues at stake and the libel itself. Rather than fight the case, Ball requested and won a dismissal, citing his poor health and arguing in terms that he could not have damaged Mann's reputation because no sensible person takes him seriously, his own motion to dismiss actually described his claims as being given no credibility by the average, reasonable reader. This echoes the judgement in Ball's case against Andrew Weaver, where the Judge wrote of Ball's indifference to the truth and found that a reasonably thoughtful and informed person would be unlikely to place any stock in his views.

So in nine years the nearest thing we have to a legal appraisal of the arguments was the apology and retraction by the publisher of the libel that I quoted upthread.

The fact that he personally might not pay them at all, thanks to having financial backers, ought to raise eyebrows

 But then after, John O’Sullivan over in England, who has been battling this too, he helped me set up a website and I got a lot of donations from people to help with the legal costs.”

Dr Ball then reveals to the public for the first time that he then got a lot of help from the famous New York hedge fund manager, Bob Mercer. “He (Mercer) just said ‘Look, I’ll provide all the legal funds you want.’

https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/10/01/climatologist-dr-tim-ball-gives-first-interview-after-on-victory-over-michael-mann/

"So in nine years the nearest thing we have to a legal appraisal of the arguments was the apology and retraction by the publisher of the libel that I quoted upthread.

Jun 28, 2020 at 10:56 AM Phil Clarke"

Mann has not yet given any evidence in Court, so he has not been cross examined

"I am willing to stand corrected over whether Dr Mann will have to pay a proportion of Ball's costs".

Thank you - very gracious.

We're dancing in circles regarding the significance of Mann's libel litigation against those who criticise him.

You're quite right that no Court has yet made a finding against Mann on the science. But of course Mann is in no rush to get a case to trial, which as I keep saying is not normal behaviour for a libel (or indeed any) plaintiff/claimant. As for your comment that you doubt if Mann is unduly bothered about his case against Ball being struck out, you may well be right. The job has been done - a critic has been tied up in knots in Court for years, and has had the Damocles Sword of the litigation (with its attendant costs and worries hanging over him) for years. Other potential critics may well have taken note, especially with another protracted case dragging its painfully slow way through the US Courts.

Is the object of the exercise to win damages for libel, or is it to stifle potential critics? If it's the former, why are the cases so slow to get to trial, where one might expect him to achieve that objective, if his case is justified?

Mark,

It is demonstrably the case that the majority of delay in the Mann/Steyn case is down to the court taking unconscionable amounts of time to respond to defence motions, years in some instances.

Dr Mann's team dropped the ball in the Tim Ball case, no doubt, however in the arena of climate science Ball is a negligible figure -putting it generously. He has made a reasonable living on the denial circuit, but is hardly a stranger to litigation. In 2006 he sued the Calgary Herald for $300 Canadian after they published a letter challenging his self-inflated credentials. The newspaper counter-claimed with:

"...that the Plaintiff (Ball) never held a reputation in the scientific community as a noted climatologist and authority on global warming....

"The Plaintiff has never published any research in any peer-reviewed scientific journal which addressed the topic of human contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming;

"The Plaintiff has published no papers on climatology in academically recognized peer-reviewed scientific journals since his retirement as a Professor in 1996;

"The Plaintiff's credentials and credibility as an expert on the issue of global warming have been repeatedly disparaged in the media; and

"The Plaintiff is viewed as a paid promoter of the agenda of the oil and gas industry rather than as a practicing scientist."

Dr Ball swiftly withdrew the case.

More recently, Ball was sued for libel by Andrew Weaver. The case was dismissed,on the grounds that Timothy Ball was incapable of damaging anyone's scientific reputation because nobody takes him seriously.

Simply put, a reasonably thoughtful and informed person who reads the Article is unlikely to place any stock in Dr. Ball’s views, 

You say that Dr Mann's funding should 'raise eyebrows'. And yet you are silent on the bankrolling of Tim Ball by the principal investor in Cambridge Analytica.

Very odd.

Correction: $300 Canadian should read $300K Canadian.

and yet Mr. Clarke rails against those who choose to moderate out his efforts at comedy flatulism.