A North Dakota judge has said he will order Greenpeace to pay damages expected to total $345m in connection with protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline from nearly a decade ago, a figure the environmental group contends it cannot pay.
In court papers filed Tuesday, Judge James Gion said he would sign an order requiring several Greenpeace entities to pay the judgment to pipeline company Energy Transfer. He set that amount at $345m last year in a decision that reduced a jury’s damages by about half, but his latest filing did not specify a final amount.
The long-awaited order is expected to launch an appeal process in the North Dakota supreme court from both sides.
Last year, a nine-person jury found Netherlands-based Greenpeace International, Greenpeace USA and funding arm Greenpeace Fund Inc liable for defamation and other claims brought by Dallas-based Energy Transfer and subsidiary Dakota Access.
The jury found Greenpeace USA liable on all counts, including conspiracy, trespass, nuisance and tortious interference. The other two entities were found liable for some of the claims.
The lawsuit stems from the pipeline protests in 2016 and 2017, when thousands of people demonstrated and camped near the project’s Missouri River crossing upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation. The tribe has long opposed the pipeline as a threat to its water supply.
If that’s what you get for peacefully protesting, you might as well just go full eco-terrorist instead.
Many states in the president’s first term made laws making organizers of a rally responsible for anything at that rally, to huge civil and harsh criminal penalties, and or made it a serious felony to obstruct any critical infrastructure, defined very broadly. Like being on a sidewalk in front of an oil company and the cop tells you to move and says you refused, you could be charged kind of thing. They can kettle you and then say you refused to disperse. Or god forbid you engage in civil disobediance, it’s now deserving of decades in prison, with judges, prosecutors, politicians, and swells possessed of fury and caprice to end the lives of any that dare to oppose big money.
Dark times, people don’t quite realize just how bad these people are, and how bad the laws are. The courts are fucked.
I love the Streisand effect in defamation lawsuits.
I’d never have heard of that shitty company otherwise.
Protesting, as we all know, is only legal when it’s ineffective.
Okay? Will the judge also make the oil company pay for the damage it has caused to the environment?
The real answer is: Perhaps, if someone brings a lawsuit from people with standing who are harmed. That’s just how the system works.
Meanwhile white supremacist Nazi propagandist Alex Jones destroyed so many lives it’s incalculable and he gets away with not paying any of the victims which he’s proven to have knowingly profited from hurting.
Doesn’t he literally owe them 1 billion dollars or did that change without me knowing. I didn’t really keep up after the weird shit that happened with the auction.
I think that’s correct. For some reason, I guess because it was civil court instead of criminal, they’re doing absolutely nothing to enforce that judgement.
A corrupt judgement, they shouldn’t pay a dime, appeal, and liquidate assets, not a fucking dime for this kangaroo court. This was openly corrupt, the judges involved think the Republic is already dead. Just as the federal case right now prosecuting anarchists that were at a rally where an Ice agent got shot by someone that they had nothing to do with are facing a judge that declared a mistrial because of a t-shirt a defense lawyer was wearing of some revolutionary, and declared he was going to be questioning the jurors, and lawyers would not be allowed to ask jurors follow up questions.
Included is a charge against a guy for moving legal “zines,” first amendment writings, so the feds wouldn’t seize them, after his girlfriend was arrested, he wasn’t at the trial. Moving non illegal material non illegally is illegal because the feds might have wanted to seize it.
I think this is the one there are a number of articles on this: https://theintercept.com/2026/02/16/daniel-sanchez-estrada-prairieland-trial-zines/
The justice system is a joke, we need real leaders that will press these judges for betraying their oaths, not pretend they are honorably doing their jobs as our fake opposition politicians the democrats have done.
just declare bankrupty, creat the New Greenpeace, like GM did.
It would be highly unethical to pay anything, and no reason they can’t just reorganize under a new organization, this time set up in a way with nothing to seize from court judgements, that can be dropped at the first lawsuit and form under a new organization at the drop of a form.
The very structure of at least corporations is such that only investor stock and assets owned by them is at risk, there is no personal liability of assets. These greenpeace people need to think about sheltering assets though, preferably in places like the netherlands more insulated from corrupt US courts, as they could find pretexts to claim they can personally strip officials in the organization of assets.
We are entering a period of oligarchic repression, we need to operate in a way that presumes bad faith, and betrayal of our rights.
We need to be sure to protect ourselves from bad charges; have places to flee in other countries that won’t extradite for kangaroo court charges, and or will tip them off and allow them to skip out to other countries before they are grabbed; and to use these organizations as throw aways. To be dropped and a new unconnected one by new people in unconnected ways to take up the next fight. Make a dozen in the next year, use them as needed. Drop them as accused in court, rather than waste donor money defending. Instead if anything use that money for PR to call them out truthfully, abusing the legal system, corrupt prosecutions, etc.
Fundraising just needs new protocols, to be able to get some of the same donors without being connected to the old as prosecutors and will allege.
The very structure of at least corporations is such that only investor stock and assets owned by them is at risk, there is no personal liability of assets.
That’s not correct. It’s uncommon, but the courts can do something called Piercing the Veil and go after people who habitually create new corporations to avoid paying judgements.
That is why I’m saying to have these new organizations completely unrelated, all different people, organized mostly outside the US, organized mostly beforehand. So register a dozen in the next few months, use them as need be, so it’s not like one dissolves and a new one is immediately organized. Different people, no connections for a netherlands court or what have you to plausibly freeze their assets at the behest of american courts.
I would like to know more about this piercing the veil, is there an example you can recall that it’s been used recently?
https://www.nycourts.gov/reporter//3dseries/2017/2017_06419.htm
That’s the court case for the crane that collapsed in NYC in the late 2000s (concluded in 2017)
I think I remember that actually, there were like 3 crane collapses right around the same time, these things seem to happen in groups oddly enough, just like the airplane crashes and near crashes just lately.
So whomever registers these, and is an officer of such a nonprofit, they would want to not have assets, be safely-ish-er in another country like the netherlands or denmark, and otherwise stay insulated from anything that could implicate them with a corrupted judiciary, keeping in mind corporate security contractors often hiring cops off duty will do things police can not and get away with it that will be used in court.
Another reason to get a good bike immediately. And more money to you and less to the oil and automobile industry.
