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.
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.