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.
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.