Greenpeace ordered to pay more than $660M for Dakota Access Pipeline protests
Environmental group Greenpeace was ordered Wednesday to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to a Texas-based pipeline company for its role in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline's construction in North Dakota.
On Wednesday, a nine-person jury at the Morton County courthouse in south-central North Dakota awarded more than $660 million in damages to Energy Transfer and its subsidiary Dakota Access, according to calculations from Greenpeace. The company accused Greenpeace USA, parent group Greenpeace International, and funding arm Greenpeace Fund Inc. of paying protesters to disrupt the pipeline's construction and spreading misinformation about the controversial project.
The verdict — which included damages for defamation, trespassing, and civil conspiracy — came after two days of deliberations. The jury awarded more than $400 million in punitive damages, which are intended to punish defendants for their conduct, according to Reuters.
Greenpeace said it plans to appeal the decision, calling the case an attempt to "silence free speech and peaceful protest." The group has maintained that it only played a minor role in the demonstrations that occurred nearly a decade ago near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
Energy Transfer said the verdict was a "win for all law-abiding Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law."
"While we are pleased that Greenpeace has been held accountable for their actions against us, this win is really for the people of Mandan and throughout North Dakota who had to live through the daily harassment and disruptions caused by the protesters who were funded and trained by Greenpeace," the company said in a statement to Paste BN.
'We will not back down, we will not be silenced'
Energy Transfer first sued Greenpeace in 2017, accusing the group of racketeering and defamation with the goal of blocking the Dakota Access Pipeline. The company argued that the group's actions and publicity against the pipeline's construction caused billions of dollars in damages.
After a federal court dismissed the lawsuit in 2019, Energy Transfer filed a defamation lawsuit in state court. The company initially sought $300 million, saying Greenpeace's interference had harmed its "critical business and financial relationships."
The environmental group has previously said that Energy Transfer’s claimed damages would threaten to bankrupt the group's entity in the U.S. In a news release Wednesday, Greenpeace described the lawsuit as "one of the largest Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) cases ever filed."
Critics have called the cases meritless lawsuits sparked by major corporations to silence or impose significant litigation costs. As of January, 35 states and the District of Columbia have anti-SLAPP laws, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. But there are no anti-SLAPP statutes in North Dakota.
Last month, Greenpeace International filed a lawsuit against Energy Transfer in a Dutch court, saying it was the first test of a new European law aimed at curbing lawsuits intended to silence rights activists.
"Energy Transfer hasn’t heard the last of us in this fight. We’re just getting started with our anti-SLAPP lawsuit against Energy Transfer’s attacks on free speech and peaceful protest," Greenpeace International's general counsel Kristin Casper said in a statement. "We will see Energy Transfer in court this July in Amsterdam. We will not back down, we will not be silenced."
Dakota Access Pipeline protests
Tribal advocacy groups and environmental activists strongly oppose the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, claiming that it contributes to global warming by the use of fossil fuels, threatens water supplies, and interferes with native ancestral lands.
The project began in 2016 and was completed the following year. The pipeline transports roughly 40% of the oil produced in North Dakota’s Bakken region. Protests against the project began in April 2016 and ended in February 2017 when authorities cleared out the last holdouts from the protest camp.
Civil rights and environmental law experts have raised concerns over Wednesday's verdict. Civil rights attorney V. James DeSimone said the decision will "no doubt impact Greenpeace and the organizers of future protests."
"Perhaps the most important message is to focus on the importance of peaceful protests when exercising our right to assembly and freedom of speech," DeSimone said in a statement. "We should not forget that these protests were initiated by Native Americans who had the right to be concerned about the water on their land."
The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) said it remained committed to "defending the constitutional right to protest, especially when it comes to Indigenous-led actions in defense of life, land, and health."
"The verdict against Greenpeace not only represents an assault on free speech and protest rights, but a calculated attack on the sovereign rights of the Standing Rock Sioux and all Indigenous Peoples defending their land and water," CIEL president and CEO Rebecca Brown said in a statement.
Contributing: Trevor Hughes, Paste BN; William Petroski, The Des Moines Register; Reuters