We’ve filed two motions to dismiss with prejudice Michael Mann’s lawsuit, both under the DC Anti-SLAPP Act, and for failure to state a claim.

The former is a relatively new law whose purpose is precisely to prevent such harassing lawsuits, and strangle them in the cradle before a defendant has to expend considerable resources on a frivolous case. The latter is a blast at his repeated allegations of malice and intention to harm on our part as though those are facts, with no actual facts to support them, and his own filing containing much to contradict. Obviously, I was quite involved with the preparation of both these briefs. As I’ve said all along, he never had much of a case. National Review and Mark Steyn will probably have something up about theirs tomorrow (they were separate filings, because the situations were different, over different postings, though there is also much in common).

Unfortunately, if these dismissals are granted, there will be no “scientific trial of the twenty-first century” over the hockey stick, but it will get the legal issues out of our hair, and we’ll get to go after him for attorney fees, possibly discouraging any future attempts to muzzle the “deniers.”

[Update a while later]

Just to expand on the issues in the second motion, in order to show malice and reckless disregard for the truth on my/our part, he has to show (among other things) that we didn’t really believe what I wrote about his “exoneration.” His logic seems to be:

a) Various investigations have exonerated me (in my not-so-humble opinion).
b) Simberg claims to have read them, and in fact even linked to them, and yet he still claimed that I was not exonerated.
c) Simberg is obviously lying. Who needs more evidence than that?

He doesn’t seem to consider the possibility that, having read the reports on the investigations, our opinions simply differ on whether or not they really exonerated him. Presumably, a judge will be smarter.