They’re criminally insane. No one should be serving life without parole for a non-violent crime. Of course, in California, we have a huge taxpayer-funded lobby for this, in the form of the prison-guard union.
[Update a couple minutes later]
California’s pampered public employees.
I had a thought about your case. Have your lawyers considered bringing a motion to challenge the sufficiency of the allegations, based on the vagueness of why your conduct would be malicious?
Specifically, the complaint alleges that you maliciously accused Mann of being dishonest (among other things). What the complaint does not say is:
Rand Simberg had the ability to review the underlying data, and if he had done so, he would have seen that Mr. Mann was not dishonest, and Rand Simberg’s failure to do so was malicious.
Instead, the plaintiff’s theory seems to be that Rand Simberg should have accepted the representations made by Michael Mann’s friends (peer reviewers), and Rand Simberg’s failure to accept the truth of those representations was malicious.
If the complaint said that in so many words, I think it would be laughed out of court.
Good luck.