When the environmental group Greenpeace lost a nearly $670 million verdict this month over its role in oil pipeline protests, a quarter-billion dollars of the damages were awarded not for the actual demonstrations, but for defaming the pipeline’s owner. The costly verdict has raised alarm among activist organizations as well as some First Amendment experts,…
A North Dakota jury on Wednesday awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to the Texas-based pipeline company Energy Transfer, which had sued Greenpeace over its role in protests nearly a decade ago against its Dakota Access Pipeline. The verdict was a major blow to the storied environmental organization. Greenpeace had maintained that it…
Greenpeace is among the most well-known environmental organizations in the world, the result of more than 50 years of headline-grabbing protest tactics. Its activists have confronted whaling ships on the high seas. They’ve hung banners from the Eiffel Tower. They’ve occupied oil rigs. A (fictional) activist even sailed with Greenpeace in an episode of “Seinfeld,”…
The opening week of the landmark trial of Greenpeace in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit by Energy Transfer over the Dakota Access Pipeline protests did not bode well for the defense. Lawyers for Greenpeace said so themselves in a petition filed in North Dakota’s Supreme Court. They asked the court on Thursday to move the trial out…
Lawyers for the pipeline company Energy Transfer and Greenpeace fired their opening salvos in a North Dakota courtroom Wednesday morning in a civil trial that could bankrupt the storied environmental group. The suit revolves around the role Greenpeace played in massive protests against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline nearly a decade ago. The pipeline,…
Greenpeace is set to go on trial on Monday before a North Dakota jury in a bombshell lawsuit that, if successful, could bankrupt the storied group. The Dallas-based company Energy Transfer sued Greenpeace in 2017, accusing it of masterminding raucous protests over the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation…
A court in Scotland blocked the production of oil and gas on Thursday at two large project sites being developed in British waters until their impact on climate change can be assessed. The decision was a blow for the sites’ developers, Shell and the Norwegian company Equinor, which have already spent or committed hundreds of…