[foolfoolz]

> Greenpeace maintains it only had six employees visit the protest camps, and that all worked for Greenpeace USA, not Greenpeace Fund or Greenpeace International.

> The jury found Greenpeace USA liable for almost all claims.

how does this happen? did greenepeace just run a bad trial? or lose all public trust?

[rayiner]

The protests involved what activists call “direct action,” which involves trespassing on private property, blockading workers, or damaging equipment in an effort to prevent otherwise lawful activity. For example, activists admitted to setting fire to equipment and pipeline valves in an effort to stop construction: https://www.kcci.com/article/2-women-admit-to-causing-damage.... That’s legally straightforward conduct outside 1A protections.

The more tenuous thing here is proving Greenpeace incited people to do that. Without having seen the evidence, I’m guessing there were internal documents that were bad for Greenpeace. Activist organizations sometimes adopt pretty militant rhetoric in an effort to get protesters fired up. I bet these internal documents could seem sinister to a jury of ordinary people.

The legal issue here is that there should be a very high bar for saying that first amendment protected speech amounts to incitement. But that’s not a principle of law as far as I’m aware. So any organization that adopts this militant posture for marketing reasons (which is a lot of them these days) could run the risk of that being used against them if any of the protesters end up damaging or destroying property.

[magicalist]

> The legal issue here is that there should be a very high bar for saying that first amendment protected speech amounts to incitement. But that’s not a principle of law as far as I’m aware.

I don't understand the distinction you're making here. Isn't there being a high bar for saying that first amendment protected speech amounts to incitement literally a principle of modern first amendment law (Brandenburg etc)?

> So any organization that adopts this militant posture for marketing reasons (which is a lot of them these days) could run the risk of that being used against them if any of the protesters end up damaging or destroying property.

Even the way you write this makes it sound like you know it's problematic too.

[rayiner]

The exact issue in Brandenburg was about how specific the speech has to be. Broadly saying people should do stuff is different from advocating specific illegal conduct against a specific target. That’s harder to apply here because there’s a specific target. The issue here is more: how influential does the speech need to be on the people who actually took the illegal action. I think the standard should be so high you would need some sort of vicarious liability. Like you hired people to set fires.

> Even the way you write this makes it sound like you know it's problematic too.

That was intentional.

[IAmBroom]

It's not protected speech to direct illegal action from afar, so it doesn't matter one whit if Greenpeace was there six times or six thousand or zero.

[kombine]

> The protests involved what activists call “direct action,” which involves trespassing on private property, blockading workers, or damaging equipment in an effort to prevent otherwise lawful activity. For example, activists admitted to setting fire to equipment and pipeline valves in an effort to stop construction

Decades and centuries from now our descendants will be dealing with the consequences of the destroyed climate and wonder why we punished the only people who tried to do something about it while justifying it by "the laws".

[newsoftheday]

> "the laws"

We live under law or we die under anarchy.

[jacquesm]

There are many other reasons that can kill you under the law besides anarchy, one of those is climate change and GP definitely has a very valid point.

Clearly the 'drill-baby-drill' crowd doesn't like Greenpeace at all and is doing what they can to muzzle activists because they know that if they manage to squelch Greenpeace then many lesser funded organizations will not be able to do anything all all. But history doesn't give a damn about any of that.

[scarecrowbob]

Ironically, a lot of the folks I've known sitting in trees might hold that the NGOs soak up resources and actions and basically prevent material and direct action.

The hyper-local point of that is how my buddies haven't taken grinders to the flock cameras because there is a local de-flocked group who is trying to exhaust legal actions before moving on to other options. But it's not like that kind of direct action is thought of as unethical by a lot of us, even if it's legibly illegal.

And regardless of what a person thinks about the direct action, the (very separate) idea that these larger, legal, above-ground groups are what keep folks who have very strong "feelings" from acting is a position held by folks on all sides of these things. That strategy seems central to the neo-liberal method of dealing with social unrest.

In that ecosystem, if you kill off the big NGOs you might see a thousand tiny and headless ELFs bloom.

If the post-neo-liberal (god what a shitty turn of phrase, sorry) strategy looks like "ICE", then good luck to them; the 3000:100000 ratio didn't go well in Minneapolis and as more folks start looking at how we didn't have a winter at all where I live (it's 65 degrees this week at almost 7000' in SW Colorado and the ground frost has broken) then that strategy might be subjected to reality.

[thunderfork]

You can die under law, too.

[renewiltord]

Little known fact is that you can die over law too.

[rolandog]

Let's not drape ourselves in lobbyist-ammended laws too fast now; laws are the source code, in a way, of societies. They lay down the things we value, and what we are willing to do to protect them. These last few decades, a corporate coup has taken place, and we find ourselves with goons making probably illegal changes at the behest of billionaires (or at that of the people that are blackmailing them because they're likely in "the files").

So, whose law do you find so precious that you're willing to die in anarchy for?

P.S.: Laws are actually more like new years resolutions for a society; you gotta follow through with eating the rich (enforcement), or else you get a bad case of conventus secretus which may eventually lead to acute homines fascistae

[rayiner]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBiLT3LASk

[hotstickyballs]

Direct action is literally their policy

[cucumber3732842]

And in this case the jury found them on the hook to pay for the results.

I'm not sure what they were expecting. Direct action agains an oil pipeline in ND is gonna go over about as well as direct action tourism in Florida. If by some miracle you get a judge sympathetic to your cause you won't get a jury that is. The local people want this industry, generally speaking.

[RickJWagner]

That’s very true.

The frozen plains of North Dakota aren’t worth much without oil. With oil, they provide good paying jobs to people who otherwise won’t have them.

I lived in the next state south for many years. Oil is definitely popular with the people of North Dakota.

[ckrapu]

With all due respect, I disagree.

I loved the winters. I loved the people. I loved how its natural beauty was subtle and rewarded the patient, unlike El Capitan or the Black Hills. The economy was fine before oil appeared.

[NewJazz]

https://www.dmr.nd.gov/dmr/news/studies-underscore-oil-and-g...

[RickJWagner]

I see you speak in the past tense. So you’ve moved away, in spite of your love for the winters?

[cucumber3732842]

>I loved the winters. I loved the people.

My pet theory based on personal observation is that there's a strong inverse correlation between nature trying to destroy your shit and insufferable people.

[casey2]

It's more that they paid $20K for "direct action training"

[DrBazza]

The claims were for defamation and incitement:

> A Morton County jury on Wednesday ordered Greenpeace to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline, finding that the environmental group incited illegal behavior by anti-pipeline protesters and defamed the company.

> The nine-person jury delivered a verdict in favor of Energy Transfer on most counts, awarding more than $660 million in damages to Energy Transfer and Dakota Access LLC.

It seems like the jury did its job on the evidence presented.

[ceejayoz]

Rough jury pool. 75.36% for Trump in the latest election, and one presumes a lot of energy sector employment.

[DrBazza]

Maybe? The judge, and the lawyers involved have the right to reject jurors that might prejudice a trail.

[ceejayoz]

Yes, but that's a lot easier to manage in a county that doesn't have only 30k people in it.

[DannyBee]

They applied for change of venue 3 times, lost all 3 times, and appealed it to the north dakota supreme court, and lost there too.

Overall, they could not make the showing necessary.

I read the motions and responses, and was not particularly impressed with their arguments for change of venue.

[hrimfaxi]

Lawyers don't have unlimited removals though.

[staticautomatic]

Not peremptory strikes, but you have unlimited removals for cause (and admittedly a steep appellate hill to climb if they’re unfairly denied)

[cucumber3732842]

You're gonna have a hell of a time construing a quality (energy sector or few steps removed employment) as "cause" when it's applicable to a large minority if not majority of the jury pool.

The judge might allow it, but the odds are long and the next judge will certainly allow an appeal on those grounds so you probably don't even gain much except time.

[parsimo2010]

North Dakota voted 67% overall for Trump, this is not too far from being representative of the general population. Considering that anyone who is openly hostile against energy companies is going to be removed during selection I don’t see the jury as the issue.

Edit: and considering this was the Southwest district, looking at results by county, 75% seems about right. This isn’t necessarily a biased jury in the sense that selection was unfair, this is probably the makeup you’d get with a fair selection. https://apnews.com/projects/election-results-2024/north-dako...

[ceejayoz]

People can hide their biases (or claim they can set them aside, which will often be acceptable during jury selection), and in a county with 30k people you're gonna run into people who recognize you at the grocery store a lot. This certainly wouldn't have been a pressure-free scenario.

It can be quite hard to get a jury to go against a locally powerful large employer in a small town.

[reenorap]

Did you feel that the jury in New York City (76% voted for Biden in 2020) that convicted Trump of falsifying business records similarly corrupt?

[asah]

lol, nothing to do with Biden - Trump soiled his brand in NYC over 4+ decades of screwing people over, not paying bills around town, "strategic bankruptcies" etc.

It's telling that "trump" buildings rebranded in NYC...

[ceejayoz]

NYC has a… slightly larger population to pull from, which makes the chances of being recognized at the store quite a bit lower.

Convicting Trump doesn't throw half of NYC onto the dole, either.

[watwut]

My comment was flagged. But, basic assumption should not be that Trump voters and Biden ones are symmetrical.

One group finds candidate who defrauds more then any other politician before appealing and right kind manly. They see him sexually harassing women appealing. Moreover all fascists vote for Trump. Both sides have bad people in ... but Trump side is defined by them.

There is no symetry here. This particular choice is literally showing that yes, you are more likely to be unfair kind of juror.

[throwaway-blaze]

Any argument that attempts to sound serious but includes "Moreover all fascists vote for Trump" has disqualified itself.

[AnimalMuppet]

Or maybe, just maybe, they actually did unreasonably damage the pipeline company's reputation, in a way that is outside the legally-recognized bounds of free speech. Maybe justice actually was done.

(Note well: I haven't been following this case closely enough to say. But you should at least consider that as a possibility.)

[bjourne]

Does your theory pass the sniff test? How reasonable is it to believe that Greenpeace's "defamation" cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars? Why is $345 the correct three-digit number of millions for the reputation damage Greenpeace caused?

[GuinansEyebrows]

this is only possible if you can somehow square a pipeline company's activities as intersecting with the arc of justice. as it stands, they're actively hastening the degradation of land, water, wildlife, human life and surrounding climates everywhere they operate.

[AnimalMuppet]

Regardless of what you think of pipelines, under the current system they have the protection of the law. Courts are judging based on what the law says, not on the sense of "justice" that you seem to be operating on. As you yourself said, they may not intersect.

[GuinansEyebrows]

kind of an insulting position to assume i (or anyone else you might be educating) don't know that courts ostensibly rule on law/precedent.

i'm specifically responding to your use of the word "justice" and how those two do not always align - it's a lack of precise definition, or a disagreement in terms. this is one of the clearest examples of that phenomenon that exists, especially when you consider the lengths the fossil fuel industry has gone to hide and misdirect evidence of the negative environmental impacts of their business model.

[shagie]

I'm not a lawyer.

I believe it's a question of "who is found liable" and then "what is the damages" and then the damages are split between those who are found liable.

If it was Greenpeace and {Some Org} that were both found liable, then that could be split 90% {Some Org} and 10% Greenpeace.

However, if only Greenpeace was found liable it would be 100% Greenpeace despite how little interaction they had.

[shrubby]

SLAPP as in Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.

To keep the dissenting voices quiet and to scare other groups from protesting.

Modus operandi for many industries.

[terminalshort]

A SLAPP is a frivolous lawsuit that the plaintiff has no chance of winning. In this case they won a judgment, so it's the opposite of that.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

That's not technically what a SLAPP is. The reason it is called a strategic lawsuit is frequently that it will cost the defendant so much to defend themselves that they opt to settle rather than risk that cost. Even if the plaintiff is unlikely to win, it is rarely a "no chance" situation, and with judge/district shopping, it is quite possible for large corporations to move further from "no chance" than an individual or non-profit might.

[some_random]

That is objectively not what happened here though, the point of SLAPP is that it's a frivolous suit that's meant to just exhaust the resources of the "dissenting voices". They won this suit and honestly it's not hard to believe that Greenpeace is guilty to some degree even if proving it is.

[mullingitover]

> the point of SLAPP is that it's a frivolous suit

The point is to shut people up. Lawyers don't like filing literally frivolous suits, that type of activity gets you disbarred.

[laughing_man]

In theory, yes. But does that actually happen IRL? I've never heard of a lawyer getting disbarred for the quality of suits he or she is filing.

Many years ago in Northern CA we had a lawyer that was basically going around filing suits against everyone she came in contact with as a way to pay the bills. She was eventually declared a "vexatious litigant" and had to get a judge's permission before she could sue anyone in the future, but they didn't disbar her.

[sidewndr46]

how is that any different than a lawsuit. You can file whatever you want, it doesn't mean the judge is going to hear the case

[laughing_man]

It's different because there's no lawsuit if the judge doesn't allow it to go forward, so the defendant never gets served, they don't have to hire a lawyer, and don't have to deal with the stress.

She might lose a lawsuit in summary dismissal, but the defendant is going to be out thousands of dollars by the time that happens. Anyway, the goal was never to go to court in any of her filings. What she wanted was to bully people into paying a settlement, since that meant she didn't have to pay any court fees.

[southerntofu]

Well it is very hard to believe they're guilty, at least to me. Too bad the news report does not provide any actual information about the case and the evidence (actual journalism beyond clickbaity headlines).

In environmental circles, Greenpeace is very well-known to be traitors working with big corporations to launder their image. They're opposed to sabotage and revolutionary tactics. Their activities are mostly fundraising and legal proceedings, and on the rare instance they perform so-called civil disobedience (such as deploying banners on nuclear plants), it is in very orderly fashion that doesn't provide much economic harm.

As a left-wing environmentalist, i wish such a strong voice as Greenpeace was capable to incite people to rise against the greedy corporations destroying our planet. I just don't see that happening, neither here in France nor in the USA.

[magicalist]

> SLAPP as in Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.

Unfortunately North Dakota is one of the minority of states without anti-SLAPP laws.

[shrubby]

https://www.the-case.eu/latest/number-of-slapps-in-europe-co...

[lkbm]

They specifically weren't found liable for on the ground activity, so the fact that only six employees were on the ground seems like a bit of a red herring.

> how does this happen? did greenepeace just run a bad trial? or lose all public trust?

Alternative possibility: they were actually guilty. Seems likely. The idea that Greenpeace was intentionally spreading misinformation doesn't require a big leap of faith.

[SpicyLemonZest]

> They specifically weren't found liable for on the ground activity, so the fact that only six employees were on the ground seems like a bit of a red herring.

I think that's not what the article is saying, although I read it that way too at first. Greenpeace USA, the organization whose six employees were on the ground, was found liable for "almost all claims"; it's only Greenpeace International and Greenpeace Fund, their sibling organizations, who were found not to be "responsible for the alleged on-the-ground harms committed by protesters".

[lkbm]

Ah, good catch. I misread.

[jacquesm]

Unlike oil companies who would of course never do such a thing.

[lkbm]

They sure do. They've also been sued for it, too, because it's bad. It's also bad for Greenpeace to do it.

[jacquesm]

There is absolutely no way the damage is that large and this seems to be mostly a revenge action by a community in which Greenpeace - or any other environmental organization - would never get a fair trial to begin with.

[terminalshort]

The article doesn't mention it, but it could be punitive damages

[b112]

The climate can't sue if you lie about it.

Companies and people can.

[whywhywhywhy]

> Greenpeace USA, not Greenpeace Fund or Greenpeace International

Why is something like this allowed to exist... Stacking entities and funneling wealth around in the guise of a noble cause.

[tlb]

International orgs usually need a company incorporated in every country they're working in. You need it to pay employees, for instance.

[mullingitover]

You're going to lose it when you discover that stacking entities and funneling wealth around happens as routinely as eating lunch, and it's the noble cause part that's the outlier here.

[FireBeyond]

You know that 99% of companies with revenues above say $1B do exactly this, just in the guise of often less noble causes?

Fun fact, Monster Cables owns no patents or IP (or effectively none), it just licenses them all from the "wholly independent, arms-length" Monster Cables Bermuda, Inc. entity.

[kristjansson]

We need David Macaulay to add a book on corporate structures to his repertoire. Any organization operating at anywhere close to household-name scale is a collection of cooperating legal entities.

[nitwit005]

Countries usually require you to create a local corporation, non-profit, or similar, if you have any revenue or donations. The local entity is what will file the tax paperwork.

[esafak]

It may well not exist any more under the financial burden of this sentence.

[QuadmasterXLII]

North Dakota jury breaking things to please Daddy T. On a larger scale, jury trials for defamation are a ticking time bomb catastrophe, long term incompatible with free speech. Source: was on a defamation jury and it was an utter clown fiesta and pretty close to ended my remaining faith in the US legal system and the population as a whole.

[nradov]

Jury trials for defamation have been a thing since forever and haven't caused a catastrophe yet. Jury trials occasionally get things wrong as a matter of law, which is why we have an appeals process.

[thecrash]

Some of the jurors had financial ties Energy Transfer, the district is heavily conservative and economically dependent on the oil industry. The deck was massively stacked against Greenpeace at trial.

Energy Transfer had previously attempted other suits which failed to get any traction because the claims are essentially Trump-style conspiracy theories about who is "pulling the strings" and "paying for" a massive decentralized protest movement. But they got lucky on this one. One of the advantages of having so much money you can just burn it on questionable lawsuits until one succeeds.

[gamblor956]

No, their lawyers did a fairly decent job of demonstrating that Greenpeace wasn't coordinating the radical protestors that were showing up to the protests, anymore than MAGA was coordinating all of the violent shootings by right-wingers last year.

They were never going to win the trial. More than half of the jury pool had ties to the pipeline industry. They were always going to find against Greenpeace, and they went to fairly extreme lengths to ignore the evidence presented to come up with a ridiculous damage award far in excess of the company's actual damages (even accounting for a punitive damage markup).

Will they win on appeal? Maybe pre-Trump they had a chance, but right-wing judges no longer feel bound by the law, reason, or equity.