Libel Court
Climate Scientist
Sues
For Defamation
Win or lose, the cost of fighting a libel suit chills science and journalism.[2] Prominent scientist suing climate change deniers for libel. Climatologist Michael Mann says he was defamed by groups who accused him of manipulating global-warming data (January 26, 2014. [3]Jeff Gerth: UK Libel laws used to protect corporate crime.[13]
The Daily Climate
October 23, 2012
Michael Mann, an influential climatologist who has spent years in the center of the debate over climate science, has sued two organizations that have accused him of academic fraud and of improperly manipulating data.[1]
Dave Gamble -
"How to Avoid Getting Sued for Libel"
- TAM 2012
"How to Avoid Getting Sued for Libel"
- TAM 2012
Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center, on Monday sued the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, along with two of their authors, Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn. [1]
The lawsuit, Mann's lawyer said in a statement, was based upon their "false and defamatory statements" accusing him of academic fraud and comparing him to a convicted child molester, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.[1]
Neither Mann nor his lawyer, John B. Williams of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Cozen O'Connor, were available for comment Tuesday afternoon. But on Facebook, where news of the lawsuit was initially posted Tuesday, Mann said the lawsuit was part of "a battle" to assist climate scientists in the fight against those who attack their work.[1]
"There is a larger context for this latest development," he wrote, "namely the onslaught of dishonest and libelous attacks that climate scientists have endured for years by dishonest front groups seeking to discredit the case for concern over climate change."[1]
Richard Dawkins:
Keep Libel Laws OUT of Science
But he faces a high bar: Mann has played a key role in climate science for decades, and the law generally requires a much higher burden of proof from public figures, said CEI general counsel Sam Kazman.
[1]
"I don't think he's got a shot at reaching it," Kazman said in an interview. "Our stuff may have been debatable, but it was solidly based and we had a perfect right to say what we did."[1]
"We plan to defend the suit vigorously but we think it is a totally unfounded lawsuit."[1]
In 1999 Mann published a timeline of global temperatures stretching back almost 1,000 years. The graph showed a fairly stable trend until 1900, when temperatures spiked sharply upward. That so-called "hockey stick" diagram became a lightning rod in the debate on whether humans were influencing the climate.[1]
Knesset defamation bill:
Israeli NGO 'Peace Now'
calls
slander and libel amendment
"insane"
In 2007 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore and authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report for work connecting human activities to global warming.[1]
$500,000 and two years
Two years later a cache of emails illegally obtained from University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom purported to show climate scientists manipulating data. Many of the emails were to or from Michael Mann.[1]
Upwards of seven organizations, from the National Science Foundation to Penn State, conducted investigations into Mann's work. All declared baseless allegations of academic fraud.[1]
Yet the attacks persisted: Virginia Attorney General spent $500,000 and two years unsuccessfully suing to obtain email correspondence from the University of Virginia, where Mann worked from 1999 to 2005.[1]
A separate attempt by American Traditions Institute, a conservative think tank headed by members of other conservative groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Group and Cooler Heads Coalition, was equally unsuccessful.[1]
One Sandusky reference came in a July National Review blog post by Mark Steyn, who repeated another blogger's comments comparing Mann to the disgraced football coach: "He has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet."[1]
Kazman, CEI's counsel, said the organization removed "a sentence or two" relating to the Penn State sex abuse scandal shortly after it published a post. [1]
Keep Libel Laws OUT of Science
Israeli NGO 'Peace Now'
calls
Top 30 Reasons Why Bill Cosby
is Likely Innocent of
All The Rape Allegations
is Likely Innocent of
All The Rape Allegations
Prominent Scientist
Suing
Climate Change Deniers
For Libel
Amel Ahmed
January 26, 2014
Michael Mann says he is being targeted as part of a well-funded campaign to discredit climate science research.[3]
A prominent climatologist at the center of a libel battle with deniers of man-made global warming said Sunday that he was being targeted as part of a “well-funded” campaign to silence and discredit the “entire environmental movement.”[3]
Speaking to Al Jazeera America just days after a court ruled that his defamation lawsuit against the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and conservative news magazine National Review could proceed, Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, accused his detractors of resorting to old allegations that had been disproved time and time again.
On Thursday, a judge for the D.C. Superior Court ruled in favor of the scientist, denying a motion to dismiss the libel suit.[3]
Mann sued the parties for defamation in 2012, after the CEI published and National Review republished statements accusing Mann of academic fraud and comparing him to convicted child molester and former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, as the CEI’s Rand Simberg put it, “except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.”[3]
In 2009, Mann was among several scientists who had their private emails leaked in a scandal that came to be known as Climategate. More than 1,000 emails and documents were distributed, all belonging to scientists working at the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU).[3]
Those targeted and their supporters say the documents were cherry-picked in order to discredit them and the notion that global warming is caused by people.[3]
Inside the Science of Climate Change
with Professor Michael Mann
Mann said that despite attempts to smear his research, several investigations by scientific authorities, including the National Academy of Sciences, have cleared him of any wrongdoing, finding no evidence of fraud or data manipulation.[3]
“These allegations have been reviewed by the highest scientific authorities in the land. None of them found any evidence of impropriety. And yet they continue to be laundered by climate-change deniers,” he told Al Jazeera.[3]
BILL COSBY
Court Finds Bill Cosby Accuser
Lied About Assault
In fact, he said, the most recent report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made an even stronger conclusion than his, finding that the recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the past 1,400 years.[3]
Mann added that, given the numerous investigations from scientific authorities that cleared him, the CEI and National Review should have known that the statements they were making were baseless.[3]
Climate Change Explained
Proof it's Man Made
(Dr. Michael E. Mann 1 of 2)
Williams told Al Jazeera that Mann’s detractors have deep ties to the fossil-fuel industry and are “largely funded by oil interests and anti-regulatory interests.”[3]
with Professor Michael Mann
Court Finds Bill Cosby Accuser
Lied About Assault
(Dr. Michael E. Mann 1 of 2)
Section 296
of
The Canadian Criminal Code
Makes it an indictable offence for anyone
To Publish
A Blasphemous Libel
Alan Shanoff
Friday, September 14, 2012
Section 296 of the Canadian Criminal Code makes it an indictable offence for anyone to publish a blasphemous libel. The maximum sentence is ostensibly a term of imprisonment not to exceed two years.[4]
We’ve repealed section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. That section on hate speech was a de facto blasphemy law, so why not go a step further and support free expression and minority rights by repealing section 296 of the Criminal Code? Indeed, why not repeal the remaining hate speech sections in provincial human rights codes?[4]
Some countries, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, shockingly, still prescribe the death penalty for blasphemers.Many Western countries criminalize blasphemy, or religious insult, as it is sometimes labelled.But England abolished its blasphemy laws in 2008 and they’ve never been put in place in the United States.Blasphemy laws are therefore used as a tool to violate human rights, not to enforce them.[4]
Blasphemous libel was originally an offence under the common law of England. Today, it is an offence under the common law of Northern Ireland, it is a statutory offence in Canada and New Zealand, and it has been abolished in England and Wales. It consists of the publication of material which exposes the Christian religion to scurrility, vilification, ridicule and contempt, and the material must have the tendency to shock and outrage the feelings of Christians. It is a form of criminal libel.[5]
Bad Reviews and
Defamation Law in Canada
Defamation Law in Canada
The Perils of Privacy
Breaches
by
Hospital Employees
Rhonda Shirreff , Sunny Khaira
Aug 16, 2015
Canadian privacy laws contain a basic safeguarding principle: access to personal information may only be granted on a need-to-know basis. Snooping violates that principle.[6]
Several Ontario arbitrators have upheld a “zero tolerance” approach for privacy breaches at hospitals, holding that summary dismissal is the appropriate remedy for deliberate breaches of confidentiality and workplace codes of conduct by hospital employees who snoop into patient records for their own reasons, rather than for any legitimate purpose.[6]
Privacy Breaches in Hospitals
For example, in North Bay Health Centre v. O.N.A., (2012) 216 LAC (4th) 38, a 12-year employee with a good record was fired for violating patient privacy after she accessed 5,804 individual patient health records and made over 12,000 unauthorized inquiries over a seven-year period. The arbitrator found the sheer volume of the violations warranted dismissal, adding that the employee knew or should have known that her access to patient records was properly limited to those she had a professional obligation to care for.[6]
How to Sue for Defamation of Character
Case Study:
Doctor Sues Hospital For Defamation
Kelly-Warner
Tuesday, June 30th, 2015
A Florida doctor recently won a high-dollar defamation lawsuit. His victory just goes to show that, sometimes, moving forward with a slander or libel lawsuit is the wise choice.[7]
Dr. Michael Ederer used to do work at the North Okaloosa Medical Center (“NOMC”) where David Fuller is the CEO.[7]
It appears from available reports that Fuller allegedly told representatives from the Anesthesia Healthcare Partners of Florida, Inc. that Ederer was “engaging in disruptive behavior.”[7]
According to the lawsuit, the slight hurt Ederer’s reputation in the medical community; quickly, things became professionally untenable for him. Eventually, Ederer moved elsewhere to practice medicine. But instead of leaving without taking legal action, he opted to file a defamation lawsuit against NOMC and its CEO.[7]
Defamation:
Law of Torts by Dr. Deepak Miglani
Law of Torts by Dr. Deepak Miglani
Dr. Ederer’s legal team presented a compelling, convincing case, and the jury ruled in favor of the doctor. Not only did they side with him, but they doled out a hefty penalty to the defendants — $2.145 million to be exact. Ederer got $320,000 in actual lost earnings, $400,000 in compensation for lost future earnings, $400,000 for injury to his reputation, $25,000 in punitive damages from Fuller and $1 million in punitive damages.[7]
Proving defamation in the U.S. is no small feat, but as Dr. Ederer’s case proves, it’s also not impossible. Every year, plenty of professionals win slander and libel lawsuits.[7]
What must doctors and nurses prove to win employment-related defamation claims against hospitals, medical facilities or even patients? At the very least, U.S. slander and libel plaintiffs must prove that the defendants:
◦Made a false, unprivileged statement of fact about the claimant;
◦Materially harmed the plaintiff by making the statement(s) in question;
◦Acted either negligently or with actual malice in either speaking or publishing the contested declarations.[7]
It’s likely that the medical facility will appeal the ruling, but for now, Dr. Ederer is the big winner in his medical defamation lawsuit.[7]
Defamation is a type of intentional tort in which the injured person suffers damage to her reputation due to another person spreading false statements about the injured person. Defamation in writing is called libel, while defamation that is spoken is called slander.[8]
Are you familiar with a case in Minnesota where a doctor sued a patient’s son for defamation over a negative review he posted? Dr. David McKee’s defamation lawsuit, a 4-year legal battle ended up in the Minnesota Supreme Court. The story recently came up again because BuzzFeed posted an article entitled “Insult And Injury: How Doctors Are Losing The War Against Trolls” discussing how doctors are having trouble defending themselves against negative reviews.[9]
California infectious disease specialist Michael Fitzgibbons, MD, says he knows what it feels like to get a SLAPP -- a strategic lawsuit against public participation.[10]
Collins
on Defamation Book Launch Part 2
The term is used to describe lawsuits by large entities, such as corporations, allegedly aimed at silencing criticism by less powerful groups or individuals on issues affecting the public's interest.[10]
Dr. Fitzgibbons, a medical staff member at Western Medical Center Santa Ana, says that the suit filed against him last year by Integrated Healthcare Holdings Inc. is a SLAPP. IHHI, which owns four hospitals including Western Medical, sued him for slander after he spoke out about the financial instability of the company when it defaulted on $50 million in loans.[10]
A leading medical scientist being sued under British libel laws for criticising a giant corporation has found an innovative way to hit back: he is to launch a counterclaim for libel.[11]
Henrik Thomsen, a Danish radiologist, is to launch the claim against GE Healthcare, a subsidiary of the US conglomerate General Electric, after the company accused him of defamation and issued a press release calling him a liar.[11]
Thomsen, who is "angry", according to his lawyer, Andrew Stephenson, clashed with GE Healthcare, which has offices in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, over claims that its bestselling drug Omniscan, injected as a contrast agent into patients undergoing MRI scans could cause crippling side-effects.[11]
Thomsen says an epidemic of a rare muscular condition called NSF struck at his Copenhagen hospital, leaving 20 patients permanently in wheelchairs.[11]
DEFAMATION AND MALICIOUS FALSEHOOD
English law has provided a legal claim for people whose reputations have been damaged by lies told about them. Over the centuries, this action developed into the modern law of defamation, and its main (though not only) use is now in
cases where damaging statements are published by the media. [12]
Most legal systems have a form of defamation law, but the rules vary widely throughout the world, and England’s are considered to make life more difficult for the media than the laws in many other countries.[12]
The law of defamation protects people against untrue statements that could damage their reputation, and is probably the single most important area of law for any journalist to know about. One of the reasons for this is that defamation can affect journalists in any field of work.[12]
UN defamation of religion resolution
falls short
If you work, for example, for a trade magazine or in the women’s press, it’s quite possible that you will never need to think about court reporting or official secrets after you’ve passed your law exams. But almost every kind of journalist, on almost every kind of publication, has the potential to defame someone, and some of the most high-profile defamation cases have involved quite small publications.[12]
The second reason why defamation is such an important part of the law for journalists is that being successfully sued for it can be very expensive.[12]
Damages in defamation cases are usually decided by juries; as a result, they are very unpredictable, and can be extremely high.[12]
One careless piece of research or unchecked statement could end up costing a publisher tens of thousands of pounds in damages – sometimes even hundreds of thousands – and as much again, sometimes more, in legal fees. Big national papers can absorb such losses (though decreasing circulations mean even they find it difficult), but for smaller magazines,
losing a libel case can be disastrous.[12]
The magazine Living Marxism was actually forced into liquidation after being order to pay damages of £375,000 in a libel case in 2000.[12]
Because of this, most publishers are very nervous of libel actions. [12]
One result of this is that, faced with a threat of libel, even where the journalist believes that the story is legally sound, many publishers will choose not to run it, or to water it down.[12]
In this way the threat of a libel action can be used to prevent publication of stories that really ought to be brought to the public’s attention.[12]
Similarly, many publishers, faced with a complaint about a story that has already been published, will back down, print an apology and if necessary, agree to pay some compensation, rather than allow the case to go to court and risk huge legal costs and possibly damages. In fact, most libel claims are settled out of court, and court hearings
are rare.[12]
George Galloway interviews Sean Gabb
on Nick Clegg's
libel law reform proposals
THE ELEMENTS OF DEFAMATION
As explained in the introduction, the law of defamation protects people against damage to
their reputations. To succeed in an action for defamation, the claimant must prove three
things:
● the statement complained of was defamatory;
● the statement referred to the claimant;
● the statement was published.[12]
Even if all these things are proved, a case may fail if the defendant can establish one of number of possible defences.[12]
As explained at the start of this section, defences for defamation are covered in the next chapter, but one thing worth knowing at this stage (because it will help explain some of the cases in this chapter), is that if you can prove that what you say is true, you will have a complete defence in defamation. This is known as justification.[12]
UK lawyers don't want reform
of money earning libel laws
(18Nov12)
Forms of defamation
There are two forms of defamation: libel and slander. Libel is committed by publishing a defamatory statement in permanent form, while slander covers defamatory statements in transient forms, such as unrecorded speech. Defamation actions against the media almost always concern libel, which covers defamatory statements which are made in any of the
following ways:
● printed;
● broadcast on TV or radio (Broadcasting Act 1990);
● in films and videos;
● on the internet;
● made during public performances of a play (Theatres Act 1968).[12]
For this reason, the terms ‘libel’ and ‘defamation’ can be viewed as interchangeable for the purposes of this chapter. There are rare circumstances in which members of the media can face a slander claim through their work; these are covered on p. 234.[12]
French court
convicts pro-Israel activist of libel
THE MEANING OF ‘DEFAMATORY’
Most of the original law on defamation comes from case law (see p. 6), rather than statute, so there is no single definition of what defamatory means. [12]
Old cases have suggested that a statement
will be defamatory if it ‘tends to lower the person in the estimation of right-thinking members of society’, or exposes the person to ‘hatred, contempt or ridicule’. [12]
Both of these are still accurate, but a more comprehensive definition, in line with modern legal thinking, is
given by the legal academics McBride and Bagshaw in their textbook Tort Law, 3rd edn.[12]
(Longman, 2008). They say that a statement is defamatory if reading or hearing it would make an ordinary, reasonable person tend to:
think less well as a person of the individual referred to;
● think that the person referred to lacked the ability to do their job effectively;
● shun or avoid the person referred to; or
● treat the person referred to as a figure of fun or an object of ridicule.[12]
Their definition makes it clear that the important issue is not how the defamatory statement makes the person referred to feel, but the impression it is likely to make on those reading it.[12]
The person defamed does not have to prove that the words actually had any of these effects on any particular people or the public in general, only that the statement could tend to have that effect on an ordinary, reasonable listener or reader. [12]
Nor does the claimant need to prove that they have lost money, or suffered any other kind of loss or damage. As the following cases indicate, a wide range of allegations have been found to be defamatory by the courts.[12]
In Byrne v Deane (1937), the claimant was a member of a golf club, whose owners illegally kept gambling machines on the premises. Someone reported them to the police and afterwards a poem was posted up in the club, implying that the claimant had been the informant.[12]
He sued, and won the original case, but on appeal the courts held that the suggestion was not defamatory, because a right-thinking member of society (or as it might be expressed today, an ordinary, reasonable person) would not think less well of someone for telling the police about a crime.[12]
In 2010, footballer Cristiano Ronaldo was paid substantial damages by the Daily Mirror, over a story which claimed he went ‘on a bender’ at a Hollywood nightclub. The story alleged that, while he was recovering from a serious foot injury, he went to the club, drank wine, champagne and vodka, and tried to dance on his injured foot. Cristiano Ronaldo does not drink alcohol, and although he had been at the club on the night alleged, the newspaper accepted that
he neither drank nor put his recovery at risk by trying to dance.[12]
As explained above, if you make a statement that is defamatory, but you can prove it to be true, you will be covered by the defence of justification (see p. 240). [12]
David Icke Sued:
Pays Out $166,000
to Settle Libel Action
Julian Huppert Question on Defamation Bill
Equally, if you publish a statement that is not true, but is not defamatory either, you cannot be sued for defamation.
For example, if you were to write that two single film stars were dating, when in fact they were not, the celebrities would not be able to sue for libel unless there was something in the story which would have a bad effect on their reputation.[12]
If one of them were married, or known to be in a serious relationship, they might have a case in defamation, because the story would be implying that they had been unfaithful, but if they were both single and the story was merely
untrue but not libellous, they would not.[12]
For example, if you were to write that two single film stars were dating, when in fact they were not, the celebrities would not be able to sue for libel unless there was something in the story which would have a bad effect on their reputation. [12]
If one of them were married, or known to be in a serious relationship, they might have a case in defamation, because the story would be implying that they had been unfaithful, but if they were both single and the story was merely
untrue but not libellous, they would not.[12]
Julian Huppert
Question on Defamation Bill
on Defamation Book Launch Part 2
falls short
on Nick Clegg's
libel law reform proposals
of money earning libel laws
(18Nov12)
convicts pro-Israel activist of libel
Pays Out $166,000
to Settle Libel Action
Question on Defamation Bill
