The Virginia Supreme Court awarded $250 damages to the University of Virginia and former professor Michael Mann in a case that involved Mann's emails regarding climate change.
The court's recent order only stated the amount of damages that the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute must pay. It doesn't provide details about the rationale behind the award.
The institute sued in 2011 after U.Va. refused to turn over emails requested by the group under Virginia's Freedom of Information Act. The Supreme Court ruled in April that Mann's emails were proprietary records dealing with scholarly research.
Mann told The Daily Progress that the damages are recognition that the lawsuit was frivolous.
The institute's executive director, Craig Richardson, told the newspaper that the award's amount showed that the case wasn't frivolous.
