Friday
Feb042011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Legal unpleasantries
Feb 4, 2011 Climate: Sceptics It looks as though we are about to have some legal drama: Andrew Weaver is going to sue Tim Ball for libel. Ball apparently said that Weaver doesn't know much about climatology.
Reader Comments (57)
Is there any chance that we will find out who pays the legal bills?
The bunfight between Professors Ball and Weaver has been going on since 1997, and now Weaver is getting nasty by going to law.
This is reminiscent of the celebrated Scopes Case, where a US schoolteacher was put on trial for teaching Darwinian evolution. (A film was made, starring Spencer Tracy.) The Scopes Case was a key battle in the war between science and religion, and the good guys won.
Prof. Ball must be going through some considerable anxiety, the damages claim threatening him with financial ruination. Let's hope that some well-heeled backer will help him out here. Come on, you City bankers! What better use of your massive bonuses than to defend legitimate scientific scepticism against the new religion of AGW?
Woodentop: can the writ be thrown out because of the error in "Statement of Facts" #6? ("...malicious falsehoods which have lead other persons to... cause actual loss, damage or expense to the plaintiff")
@Brent Hargreaves - no, the paragraph 6 claim is an "esto" case which is not unusual in a legal action.
If evidence emerges which fits that claim then all well and good; if not, it falls but the other parts of the claim remain. Malicious falsehood is an alternative to defamation if the court should find that the defamatory test has not been met. The leading (English) case in this area is [i]Joyce v Sengupta[/i] [1993] 1 All ER 897, CA for those interested.
Most "esto" clauses are along the lines of "if the evidence doesn't stack up/the legal test hasn't been met on proposition A, then here's proposition B."
The failure of A does not cloud consideration of B. This is also true of separable parts of proposition A (ie the subparagraphs of paragraph 4) , which I hope answers DPdlS too.
YMMV, but I find it difficult to take seriously the scientific "credentials" of one (such as Weaver) whose advance billing of the IPCC's AR4 depicted climate change as being a "barrage of intergalactic ballistic missiles".
I also find it somewhat curious (not to mention incongruous) that one who claims to have been defamed would direct his counsel to issue a Press Release - as Weaver did regarding his libel suit against the National Post - announcing the suit (I could be wrong, but I don't think even David "free speech for me but not for thee" Irving was silly enough to this).
This went some way towards ensuring that the details of his claim (which obviously contained the alleged defamatory statements) were circulated far and wide; but then he had the chutzpah to seek a rather novel remedy: he wants the defendants to “assist” him in “obtaining the removal of electronic copies” of the alleged defamatory statements.
Woodentop,
The error in the writ was one of grammar - wrong past participle of 'to lead'. I was being petty, and deserved to be misunderstood!
The suit against the National Post started with this presentation of Dr. Weaver as "The plaintiff was a lead author in the Nobel-prize winning organization (...) IPCC"
Stop it right there, it's a tad short of the full truth isn't it? The "Nobel Peace-Prize winning organization" is the full truth. The Peace Prize is a political award not a scientific award. Big difference as far as this award's scientific value: no scientist peers awarded it but a bunch of politicians! The fact the opening statement doesn't mention the exact title is troubling and imo doesn't reflect positively on the plaintiff and its lawyers...
Shed no tears for Tim Ball. He's the one who started the whole lawsuit shenanigans in the first place, and was given ample opportunity to simply withdraw his outright falsehoods, (like CFP have sensibly done). Remember when the boot was on the other foot and he tried suing Dan Johnson & the Calgary Herald for simply pointing out his many egregious factual errors? He was hit with such a devastating statement of defence from Johnson, forensically documenting each and every assertion, that the emboldened Herald also told him to take a flying f$%&. He promptly withdrew his case without a whimper, robbing us all of the hilarity and lulz that were about to ensue. I can't ever forgive him for that. He doesn't need a bigger boat. It's high time he was thrown overboard with the chum. He's an embarrassment.