A jury in the U.S. state of North Dakota has found the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace liable for defamation against Texas-based Energy Transfer, operator of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace has denied the claim, saying the company is using the lawsuit to intimidate and silence peaceful protest.
The jury ordered Greenpeace to pay Energy Transfer more than $650 million in damages. Greenpeace said it plans to appeal. “We know that this fight is not over,” Deepa Padmanabha, Greenpeace senior legal adviser, told the media.
The case revolves around protests against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017 by thousands of people near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The Standing Rock tribe sued the government to block the pipeline, arguing that it passed dangerously close to their water supply.
In his closing argument, Trey Cox, a lawyer for Energy Transfer, said, “Greenpeace took a small, disorganized, local issue and exploited it to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline and promote its own selfish agenda.”
Greenpeace has said its involvement with the protest was minimal and the case is a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP suit, intended to discourage protest by raising the specter of an expensive legal battle.
Marty Garbus, who is part of a group of lawyers called the Trial Monitoring Committee (TMC) that has been observing the proceedings from the start, said in a press statement: “In my six decades of legal practice, I have never witnessed a trial as unfair as the one against Greenpeace that just ended in the courts of North Dakota.” Garbus previously represented former South African President Nelson Mandela and U.S. civil rights activist Cesar Chavez.
Fellow TMC lawyer Steven Donzinger said the problem started with the members of the jury selected for the trial, many of whom work in the oil industry. Moreover, the trial was held in the same county where the protests took place, so “all the jurors being interviewed had feelings about the protests. It was like they were witnesses,” Donzinger told Mongabay by phone. “It was impossible for Greenpeace to get a fair trial in this county,” he added.
A Greenpeace petition to move the trial to another county, one not directly affected by the protests, was denied, court records show.
Donzinger said Greenpeace was then denied a fair opportunity to defend itself in court. One key example is Energy Transfer’s claim that Greenpeace defamed the company by falsely stating that its pipeline was unsafe and had leaked. However, the court barred Greenpeace from presenting an expert witness who could verify that the pipeline had, in fact, leaked, Donziger said. “That decision effectively gutted Greenpeace’s entire defense on the issue,” he added.
Energy Transfer spokesperson Vicki Granado told Mongabay by email, “We are very pleased that Greenpeace has been held accountable for their actions against us.”
Banner imageof pipeline protesters by Pax Ahimsa Gethen via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
