A North Dakota jury awarded Wednesday nearly $700 million in damages to the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline after finding Greenpeace liable for helping incite the mass demonstrations aimed at derailing the energy project.
The nine Morton County jurors found Greenpeace entities guilty of defamation, trespass and conspiracy related to their role in funding and training activists seeking to block the final segment of the 1,712-mile oil pipeline with the lengthy 2016-17 protests.
The Dallas-based company Energy Transfer and its subsidiary, Dakota Access, initially sought $300 million in damages, an amount that Greenpeace USA previously warned would force it to shut down.
Energy Transfer described the estimated $660 million verdict as a victory for the North Dakotans who bore the daily brunt of the protests as thousands of self-styled “water protectors” descended on the remote rural county.
“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.
“It is also a win for all law-abiding Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law,” said the company. “That the disrupters have been held responsible is a win for all of us.”
Netherlands-based Greenpeace International, which was sued along with Greenpeace USA and the Greenpeace Fund, indicated that it would appeal the verdict over what it described as the “meritless” case intended to chill free speech through expensive litigation.
“We will not back down. We will not be silenced,” Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International executive director, said in a statement on social media.
The nine-figure award was cheered by supporters as well-deserved payback for the mayhem wreaked by protesters for nearly a year, but condemned by foes as an attack on free speech and environmental activism.
The four-week trial began Feb. 24.
Greenpeace sought to move the trial from the Morton County Courthouse in Mandan to Fargo, contending that it would be unable to receive a fair trial in the county hardest-hit by the demonstrations.
The North Dakota Supreme Court denied that request earlier this month.
Attorneys for Greenpeace argued that the group played a relatively minor role in what it described as peaceful protests against the pipeline in support of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, whose reservation is located a half-mile at the nearest point from from the underground pipeline.
Energy Transfer attorneys said that Greenpeace was involved in spreading falsehoods about the project, causing investors to pull out and the company to miss a critical production deadline that cost it millions.
Protesters also set fires, vandalized equipment, blocked roads, butchered livestock, threatened workers, and tangled with police, resulting in more than 100 arrests before North Dakota’s harsh winter cleared out most of those in the protest encampment.
After the National Guard moved out the last of the activists in February 2017, crews found a dozen abandoned dogs and hauled off 21 million pounds of garbage at the encampment in a $1.1 million clean-up project.
The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) was completed the following June, allowing crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken region to be delivered to an oil terminal in Patoka, Illinois, and then to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
Siding with Greenpeace was Standing Rock Sioux Chairwoman Janet Alkire, who accused Energy Transfer of promoting “lies and propaganda to discredit our Tribe and our good faith concerns with DAPL’s impacts on our Reservation environment.”
“The case is an attempt to silence our Tribe about the truth of what happened at Standing Rock, and the threat posed by DAPL to our land, our water and our people,” she said in a statement ahead of the trial. “The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe will not be silenced.”
• This article was based in part on wire service reports.
