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.
Protesting, as we all know, is only legal when it’s ineffective.
It genuinely was such a successful psyop for people to believe peaceful protest is the only way to accomplish anything
If that’s what you get for peacefully protesting, you might as well just go full eco-terrorist instead.
Right? Might as well ACTUALLY cause millions in damages
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.
Death to the pipeline
Okay? Will the judge also make the oil company pay for the damage it has caused to the environment?
Meanwhile white supremacist Nazi propagandist Alex Jones destroyed so many lives it’s incalculable and he gets away with not paying any of the victims which he’s proven to have knowingly profited from hurting.
A corrupt judgement, they shouldn’t pay a dime, appeal, and liquidate assets, not a fucking dime for this kangaroo court. This was openly corrupt, the judges involved think the Republic is already dead. Just as the federal case right now prosecuting anarchists that were at a rally where an Ice agent got shot by someone that they had nothing to do with are facing a judge that declared a mistrial because of a t-shirt a defense lawyer was wearing of some revolutionary, and declared he was going to be questioning the jurors, and lawyers would not be allowed to ask jurors follow up questions.
Included is a charge against a guy for moving legal “zines,” first amendment writings, so the feds wouldn’t seize them, after his girlfriend was arrested, he wasn’t at the trial. Moving non illegal material non illegally is illegal because the feds might have wanted to seize it.
I think this is the one there are a number of articles on this: https://theintercept.com/2026/02/16/daniel-sanchez-estrada-prairieland-trial-zines/
The justice system is a joke, we need real leaders that will press these judges for betraying their oaths, not pretend they are honorably doing their jobs as our fake opposition politicians the democrats have done.
