Usually, you don’t welcome a nuisance lawsuit, because it’s a nuisance. It consumes time. It costs money. But this is a different matter in light of one word: discovery.
If Mann sues us, the materials we will need to mount a full defense will be extremely wide-ranging. So if he files a complaint, we will be doing more than fighting a nuisance lawsuit; we will be embarking on a journalistic project of great interest to us and our readers.
And this is where you come in. If Mann goes through with it, we’re probably going to call on you to help fund our legal fight and our investigation of Mann through discovery. If it gets that far, we may eventually even want to hire a dedicated reporter to comb through the materials and regularly post stories on Mann.
My advice to poor Michael is to go away and bother someone else. If he doesn’t have the good sense to do that, we look forward to teaching him a thing or two about the law and about how free debate works in a free country.
He could use a lot of education on that score. As I said at the time, this was nothing but bluster to try to get a cheap apology.
[Update a few minutes later]
Mark Steyn: Stick it where the global warming won’t shine.
[One more update before bed]
I have to say that it’s unusual (fortunately) for me to be mentioned in a response to a libel lawsuit. I still hope he moves forward, but if he does, he’s even more of a fool than he’s already demonstrated himself to be. I don’t think his tobacco lawyer had any idea what he was getting himself into when he sent that letter on Mann’s “behalf,” and he’s likely advising him to give it up at this point.