Judge finalizes order for Greenpeace to pay $345M in ND oil pipeline case

For context, a statement from the legal experts who monitored the trial.

> It is our collective assessment that the jury verdict against Greenpeace in North Dakota reflects a deeply flawed trial with multiple due process violations that denied Greenpeace the ability to present anything close to a full defense.

https://www.trialmonitors.org/statement-of-independent-trial...

> 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?

Saving this thread in case anyone ever tries to claim this forum is full of intelligent discussion.

Life pro tip: A 345 million dollar judgment against a company worth less than 10% of that for the crime of maybe telling some protesters to engage in direct action against a company leaking oil into their water supply is not remotely sane, no matter how 'legal' the jury of oil-connected people may say it was.

Sounds like it's time for GreenPeace USA to follow the chemical industries example - do a corporate reorg, put all the liabilities in specific subsidiary and then declare bankrupacy for that subsidiary.

As one of the few developers based in North Dakota, I was NOT expecting to see ND at the top of hacker news this morning.

I lived very close to the protests. I won't comment on the politics but, 2016-2017 was very impactful on the community here.

I find it hard to believe these people did 345 million in damage.

If I boycott a company, am I legally responsible for any lost profit that happens as a result?

Does anyone know what assets Greenpeace USA has? I imagine Greenpeace international will set up Greenpeace USA 2.0, all the volunteers/employees will move over, and the original will just go bankrupt.

If you are going to break the law under capitalism, you must do it sustainably. Facebook, Apple, et al have shown that the latency of judicial pipeline usually means a billion dollar in fines comes after several billion in profits. You profit from the lag between the crime and the consequence.

I don't think social justice has that same profit pipeline, but I am not sure. There is an asymmetry in the type of evil our society allows.

Greg Hirsch got paid

So they almost certainly are guilty, but the damages seem exorbitant

It would be very easy for an energy company to make hundreds of thousands of donations through "private supporters" to Greenpeace so as to cause problems for their competitors without liability, including defamation, and violent protests. They could be profiting by encouraging angry kids to go ruin their lives, and there would be no consequences for the executives behind it all. In fact, if this were actually happening, then in this story they would have just gotten back half of their marketing budget, which they can recycle for another violent campaign against this or any other competing energy company. And college kids around the world would help to supplement that marketing budget by donating to what they think is an environmental cause.

I think climate change is a massive and real problem. And that we need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels quickly. But I would actually be very happy to see Greenpeace fold as a result of this. I think they’ve been on the wrong side of many important issues, including this one.

I think Greenpeace did as much as anybody to turn the world against nuclear power in the late 20th century. And this clearly set us in the wrong direction as far as reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

Also for the ND pipeline, I think it does relatively little to change the economics of fossil fuels. And thus does relatively little to change our path to sustainable energy. But it does a lot geopolitically. Having more local oil means the trigger-happy US government is less likely to start wars to ensure access to oil. Heck even the Iran conflict this week stems back to the 1953 CIA-instituted coup which was half motivated by protecting access to oil.

Hot take: decarbonization is a policy issue that should be pursued primarily through incentives to increase production and quality of clean alternatives. Not by throttling supply of oil. Look at the electrical grid. Solar and wind are just cheaper than fossil fuels now which means the decarbonization is economically inevitable.

Wait til you hear about Steven Donziger.

Steven is a lawyer who helped Ecuador sue Chevron who was polluting massively. The Ecuadorians won and secured an historic $9.5 billion judgment because it was so egregious. Did that end the matter? No.

Chevron ran to American courts and argued that Donziger helped secure this judgment by committing fraud. I believe the evidence of this was a video showing a minister and Donziger at a social gathering. The court ruled in Chevron's favor. This made the judgment unenforceable in the US.

As part of all this, Chevron wanted Donziger to hand over all communications and electronic devices associated with the Ecuador prosecution. That is of course attorney-client privilege. But the court agreed and Donziger refused.

But it didn't end there. Chevron (through their law firm) lobbied the Department of Justice to criminally prosecure Donziger for this. The DoJ declined.

But it didn't end there either. Chevron asked the court, and they agreed, to appoint Chevron's own law firm to conduct a private criminal prosecution. You might be asking "what is that?" and you'd be right to be confused. It rarely happens but a civil court can pursue a private criminal prosecution.

Donziger was convicted, disbarred and spent years in home detention over this whole thing. The Appeals Court affirmed all this and the Supreme Court declined to intervene.

So does it surprise me that Greenpeac can get hit by a $345M judgment for hurting the feelings of an oil company? No, no it does not.

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