A jury in the United States has ordered Greenpeace to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages in a defamation lawsuit brought by oil pipeline operator Energy Transfer, raising serious free speech concerns.
The environmental advocacy group has said it will appeal Wednesday’s verdict, which came almost a decade after activists joined a protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the Dakota Access Pipeline, in one of the largest anti-fossil fuel protests in US history.
The jury in North Dakota awarded more than $660m in damages across three Greenpeace entities, citing charges including trespass, nuisance, conspiracy and deprivation of property access.
Energy Transfer, a Texas-based company worth $64bn, celebrated the verdict and has denied attempting to stifle speech.
“We would like to thank the judge and the jury for the incredible amount of time and effort they dedicated to this trial,” the company said in a statement.
“While we are pleased that Greenpeace will be held accountable for their actions, this win is really for the people of Mandan and throughout North Dakota who had to live through the daily harassment and disruptions caused by the protesters who were funded and trained by Greenpeace.”
The nine-person jury in Mandan, North Dakota, deliberated for two days, in the trial which began in late February, before finding in favour of Energy Transfer on most counts.
However, a group of lawyers who monitored the case, calling themselves the Trial Monitoring Committee, said many of the jurors had ties to the fossil fuel industry.
“Most jurors in the case have ties to the oil and gas industry and some openly admitted they could not be impartial, although the judge seated them anyway,” the committee said in a statement, following jury selection.
Greenpeace plans to appeal the verdict. Greenpeace International is also countersuing Energy Transfer in the Netherlands, accusing the company of using nuisance lawsuits to suppress dissent. A hearing in that case is set for July 2.
“The fight against Big Oil is not over today,” said Greenpeace International General Counsel Kristin Casper.
“We know that the law and the truth are on our side.”
The ‘water protectors’ of Standing Rock
Energy Transfer’s case against Greenpeace dates back to protests in North Dakota almost 10 years ago.
In April 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe set up a protest camp along the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline route to stop construction, calling themselves “water protectors”.
The camp continued for more than a year, drawing support at first from other Indigenous people around the country and later from other activists, including environmental organisations like Greenpeace, and even hundreds of US Army veterans.
Even as wintry conditions set in and hundreds of police patrolled the protests with waves of violent arrests which also targeted journalists, the Sioux and their supporters remained in place.
According to Energy Transfer’s lead lawyer Trey Cox’s closing arguments, Greenpeace’s role involved “exploiting” the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to advance its anti-fossil fuel agenda, according to the North Dakota Monitor.
But Greenpeace maintains that it played only a small and peaceful role in the movement, which, it says, was led by Native Americans.
As one Lakota organiser, Nick Tilsen, testified during the trial, the idea that Greenpeace organised the protests is “paternalistic”, according to the Lakota Times.
Despite the protests, the pipeline, designed to transport fracked crude oil to refineries and on to global markets, became operational in 2017.
Energy Transfer, however, continued its legal pursuit of Greenpeace, initially seeking $300m in damages through a federal lawsuit, which was dismissed.
It then shifted its legal strategy to North Dakota’s state courts, one of the minority of US states without protections against so-called “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation” (SLAPP).
‘Drill, baby drill’
Wednesday’s verdict is another win for the fossil fuel industry, as President Donald Trump promises to open up the US to fossil fuel expansion, with his campaign slogan of “drill, baby drill”, including by eliminating air and water protections.
Throughout the years-long legal fight, Energy Transfer’s billionaire CEO Kelcy Warren, a major Trump donor, was often candid about his motivations.
His “primary objective” in suing Greenpeace, he said in interviews, was not just financial compensation but to “send a message”.
Warren went so far as to say that activists “should be removed from the gene pool”.
Critics call the case a textbook SLAPP, designed to silence dissent and drain financial resources.
It comes as the Trump administration is also seeking to instate a wider crackdown on freedom of expression across the country.
In a post on Bluesky responding to Wednesday’s verdict, author and journalist Naomi Klein noted that “attacks on protest and freedoms” affecting different movements including “climate, Palestine, labor, migrant, trans and reproductive rights” should be seen as related.
“Fossil fuel companies should be forced to pay the public trillions in damages for the costs of planetary arson,” Klein added.
Meanwhile, climate change is already contributing to increasingly severe and frequent disasters in the US and around the world, including recent fires in California, and an unprecedented inland hurricane in North Carolina.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed a new lawsuit last October against the US Army Corps of Engineers, which has jurisdiction over a section of the pipeline upstream from the Standing Rock Reservation, arguing that the pipeline is operating illegally and must be shut down, according to the North Dakota Monitor.
