Back in 2017, Energy Transfer Partners, the developer behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, sued Greenpeace for what it called a “campaigns of misinformation.” This was back when the left-wing protest camp at Standing Rock because a cause celebre on the left, attracting activists from all over the country (including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez). The camp featured conflicts with police (one woman fired a gun and was later sent to prison for four years), arson and sabotage. ETP argued that this activity was being organized behind the scenes by “eco-terrorist groups” looking to profit off the fundraising associated with these protests. Here’s a bit of what the court filing said:
This case involves a network of putative not-for-profits and rogue eco-terrorist groups who employ patterns of criminal activity and campaigns of misinformation to target legitimate companies and industries with fabricated environmental claims and other purported misconduct, inflicting billions of dollars in damage…
In its simplest form, this model has two components: (1) manufacturing a media spectacle based upon phony but emotionally charged hot-button issues, sensational lies, and intentionally incited physical violence, property destruction, and other criminal conduct; and (2)relentlessly publicizing these sensational lies, manufactured conflict and conflagration, and misrepresented “causes” to generate funding from individual donors, foundations, and corporate sponsors. These putative “environmental” groups accept grants and other consideration from foundations and special business interests who use the groups’ environmental mantle to advance their own ulterior agendas…
Under the “Greenpeace Model,” raising money and the network’s profile is the primary objective, not saving the environment. “Issues” are selected according to which ones will generate maximum publicity and donations, irrespective of the environmental merits. As a matter of course, the campaigns are based upon fabricated evidence and witness accounts. Greenpeace has staged phony photo-ops, and fabricated false GPS coordinates representing locations and events that never occurred to support its campaigns, deceive the public, and elicit donations.
A year later, ETP filed a revised version of that lawsuit. Greenpeace was defiant.
ETP on Monday added five individual defendants: a man allegedly affiliated with Greenpeace, two Iowa women who have publicly claimed to have vandalized the pipeline, and two people associated with the Red Warrior Camp, a protest group alleged to have advocated aggressive tactics such as arson.
The company also amended its accusations, limiting defamation and business interference claims to Greenpeace and adding a criminal trespass count against all defendants.
“We are confident this move to include even more bogus claims in an already broad and baseless case will be the final nail in the coffin of a sham legal tactic,” said Greenpeace attorney Deepa Padmanabha.
Eventually the case was filed in state court in 2019. The company was right of course that the whole strategy of the protest was to raise the cost of completing the pipeline to the point that the company would simply give in. That said, I wasn’t confident ETP could prove in court that Greenpeace had been responsible.
To my surprise, ETP just won the case. A jury in North Dakota has awarded them hundreds of millions of dollars. The group is now warning that its US operations could be shut down.
A North Dakota jury on Wednesday awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to the Texas-based pipeline company Energy Transfer, which had sued Greenpeace over its role in protests nearly a decade ago against its Dakota Access Pipeline…
Trey Cox of the firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, the lead lawyer for Energy Transfer, laced into Greenpeace during closing arguments on Monday. The company accused Greenpeace of funding and supporting attacks and protests that delayed the pipeline’s construction, raised costs and harmed Energy Transfer’s reputation.
Jurors, Mr. Cox said, would have the “privilege” of telling the group that its actions were “unacceptable to the American way.” He displayed costs incurred that tallied up to about $340 million, and asked for punitive damages on top of that…
Lawyers for Greenpeace called the case against the group a “ridiculous” attempt to pin blame on it for everything that happened during months of raucous protests, including federal-government delays in issuing permits. Greenpeace has said that a $300 million judgment could force it to shut down its operations in the United States.
What a shame.
Anyway, the Washington Post has more on the crux of the case.
The case before the jury in North Dakota hinged on nine statements Greenpeace made that accused Energy Transfer of using aggressive tactics against protesters and desecrating burial grounds. The company has said these statements were not only false, but also were part of a “vast, malicious publicity campaign” against the company that damaged its relationship with the banks funding the pipeline.
Lawyers for the pipeline company also alleged that Greenpeace paid professional protesters, organized trainings for demonstrators and sent them lockboxes so they could attach themselves to construction equipment. They initially sought $300 million in damages stemming from lost financing, public relations costs, and the five-month delay in the pipeline’s construction…
Greenpeace’s lawyers said that the group had helped buy supplies to winterize the protest camp and paid the travel costs for a group of Indigenous trainers who went to Standing Rock to teach principles of nonviolent action.
Despite Greenpeace’s denials, lawyers for ETP made the case that Greenpeace was connected to a violent protest group called the Red Warrior Society:
Much of Energy Transfer’s allegations stem from Greenpeace’s ties to the Red Warrior Society, a Native American resistance group that led multiple attacks and demonstrations on pipeline construction sites, “brandishing weapons,” assaulting a security guard, throwing rocks and bottles at cars, and launching Molotov cocktails at police while burning construction equipment, according to the energy company’s complaint. Red Warrior Society felt the project was infringing on sacred tribal territory.
The first major confrontation with pipeline employees led by the Red Warrior Society occurred on Aug. 10, 2016, and several more followed through mid-September. Meanwhile, Greenpeace led supply drives for the Red Warrior Camp at Standing Rock in 10 cities across the U.S. through at least Sept. 19, according to the complaint.
Energy Transfer called Red Warrior Society an “informal organization of the most violent, most radical anti-DAPL activists in North Dakota and across the country.”
“Red Warrior Society, and its members at Red Warrior Camp, distinguished themselves from other activists by their express rejection of non-violent protest, and embrace of ‘militant direct action’ tactics,” reads Energy Transfer’s Second Amended Complaint.
As always, Greenpeace vowed to keep fighting, probably in the form of an appeal.
When asked if Greenpeace plans to appeal, Senior Legal Adviser Deepa Padmanabha said, “We know that this fight is not over.”
Padmanabha added that the organization’s work “is never going stop,” responding to questions about whether the damages amount would end Greenpeace in the United States…
“The work of Greenpeace is never going to stop. That’s the really important message today, and we’re just walking out and we’re going to get together and figure out what our next steps are,” Padmanabha added.
Maybe it is going to stop though if the group fails to first stay and then overturn this judgment they will be beyond broke. The US division of Greenpeace reportedly has about $40 million on hand, not nearly enough to pay this judgment, which could be ten times that.
