A nine-person jury in Mandan, North Dakota, on Wednesday awarded Dallas-based midstream Energy Transfer more than $660 million in damages in its lawsuit against Greenpeace, the international organization for climate activism based in the Netherlands.
The lawsuit accused the organization and several of its allies of damages and defamation associated with protests in 2016 and 2017 against construction of the company’s 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline. Energy Transfer had sought $350 million in damages associated with a five-month delay in the pipeline’s completion.
The verdict, which came after 12 days of testimony and three days of deliberation, leaned heavy on punitive damages against Greenpeace and its several corporate iterations — a clear and local rebuke for the months of sometimes violent attention wrought on the Morton County community just northwest of Bismarck.
Trey Cox, a Dallas partner at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher who led the legal effort for the plaintiffs with an all-Texas team, thanked the jury for their validation of Energy Transfer’s claims that the protests were the result of “fake news” leveled at the company’s pipeline project.
“Today, the jury delivered a resounding verdict, declaring Greenpeace’s actions wrong, unlawful, and unacceptable by societal standards,” Cox said in a statement. “It is a day of reckoning and accountability for Greenpeace. It is also a day of celebration for the Constitution, the state of North Dakota and Energy Transfer.”
Energy Transfer had accused Greenpeace of using paid protesters to disrupt construction of the Dakota Pipeline project during months-long demonstrations that featured encampments and celebrity demonstrators.
“Greenpeace maliciously misrepresented events within this community in an unrelenting attempt to stop by any means the construction of a pipeline that had already obtained all the necessary legal approvals,” said Cox. “These are the facts, not the fake news of the Greenpeace propaganda machine.”
“Peaceful protest is an inherent American right; however, violent and destructive protest is unlawful and unacceptable,” Cox continued. “This verdict clearly conveys that when this right to peacefully protest is abused in a lawless and exploitative manner, such actions will be held accountable.”
Greenpeace, for its part, had argued that their campaign against Energy Transfer and the Dakota Access project involved protected speech, and that the protests supported by Greenpeace had no material effect on the project.
In its own release following the verdict, Greenpeace said the verdict could force cessation of its operations in the U.S., but promised to continue the case.
“Big Oil Bullies around the world will continue to try to silence free speech and peaceful protest, but the fight against Energy Transfer’s meritless SLAPP lawsuit is not over.”
In its original petition, Energy Transfer accused Greenpeace of coordinating and financing efforts by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to halt construction of the pipeline which the SRST claimed would illegally traverse lands owned and occupied by the tribe.
To that end, the Energy Transfer lawsuit maintained, Greenpeace distributed false information about the project to foster enmity against the project and fund-raising for the protests, which resulted in thousands of protestors descending on the pipeline construction site followed by “organized, funded and … unlawful acts of trespass, property destruction and violence.”
Moreover, the company said, Greenpeace and allied organizations sought to influence its lenders and investors against the company with coordinated campaign of disinformation alleging that Energy Transfer had defiled Native American cultural boundaries in the process of pursuing the pipeline project.
In a telephone interview from the Gibson team’s victory celebration at the Lüft, a rooftop bar in Bismarck, Cox, who delivered the plaintiff’s final arguments in a summation that lasted an hour and 33 minutes, said the jury seemed most moved by the role of the Greenpeace disinformation campaign.
In mass mailings and news releases Greenpeace had accused Energy Transfer of a wide variety of illegal behaviors. At least one letter, sent to Energy Transfer lenders, charged the company — without evidence — of having desecrated Lakota Sioux burial grounds.
“That’s like digging up bodies,” said Cox, “and that’s about as evil as you can get. No matter what culture you are or where you live or what era you live in, that’s the definition of defamation.”
Instead, the jury heard evidence that the company had made 140 changes in the routing of the pipeline to avoid any disruption to sacred sites.
“I think the message here is that Greenpeace has lost its way, and it has to change the way it’s been doing business,” Cox said.
Cox is the spouse of Erin Neely Cox, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas. Other members of the Gibson trial team included: Collin Cox, Gregg Costa, Lara Kakish, Travis Jones, Ben Betner, Cody Johnson, Bryston Gallegos, Johanna Smith, Brian Sanders and Hunter Heck.
Greenpeace was represented at trial by the Seattle-based firm of Davis Wright Tremaine. Its team was headed by Portland partner Everett Jack — who graduated in 1989 from Houston’s South Texas College of Law.