(C) North Dakota Monitor
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Greenpeace case in hands of jury as Energy Transfer makes case for $800 million in damages • North Dakota Monitor [1]
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Date: 2025-03-17
Greenpeace and the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Monday had their final showdown in the three-week trial over whether the environmental group engaged in a destructive and defamatory campaign against the pipeline that resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
Energy Transfer accuses three Greenpeace entities — Greenpeace USA, Greenpeace International and Greenpeace Fund — of colluding to promote acts including trespassing, violence and vandalism by anti-pipeline protesters in 2016 and 2017. The company also alleges Greenpeace published defamatory statements about the pipeline to hurt the company’s reputation and get banks to pull their financial support for the project.
Greenpeace denies the allegations and maintains that Energy Transfer filed the lawsuit to harm the environmental movement.
Free speech advocates and environmentalists have raised concerns that a verdict against Greenpeace could have a chilling effect on activist groups.
The jury began its deliberations at about 2:45 p.m. and planned to adjourn for the day at 5 p.m.
The protests were started by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and drew thousands of people to rural North Dakota. The tribe views the pipeline as a threat to its water and sovereignty, since it passes through unceded Sioux Nation land. Indigenous groups and others who protested in solidarity with the tribe camped for months near where the pipeline was set to cross underneath the Missouri River.
In his closing statements, Trey Cox, the lead attorney representing Energy Transfer, accused Greenpeace of using a “vulnerable population” to further its anti-fossil fuel agenda.
“They took the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and they exploited the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe,” he said.
Cox attributed between $265 million and $340 million in damages to Greenpeace. He said the jury should not only hold Greenpeace accountable for this sum, but also hand down more than double that in punitive damages. If the jury grants Energy Transfer’s request, Greenpeace could be on the hook for between $800 million and $1 billion.
Cox argued punitive damages would dissuade Greenpeace and other organizations from acting similarly in the future.
“This is your responsibility to tell them, ‘You can’t do these things,’” he said.
Cox said all three Greenpeace defendants worked in concert to send supplies to the protests, share intel with protesters and pay Native activists to conduct trainings in the camps that encouraged demonstrators to break the law.
He showed the jury photos of construction equipment with broken windows, anti-pipeline messages written in graffiti and gas tanks filled with sand. He also displayed photos of vehicles on fire.
Everett Jack, the lead attorney representing Greenpeace’s U.S. affiliate in the case, said Energy Transfer provided no evidence that Greenpeace was the reason for any violent or destructive acts alleged by the plaintiffs.
“This lack of evidence is fatal to the claims they bring,” he said.
Current and former Greenpeace employees told the jury previously that Greenpeace USA did provide support to the demonstrations, but that it is committed to nonviolence and never endorsed or encouraged destructive behavior by protesters. Some of the activists who provided training to demonstrators at the camps similarly testified that the tactics they taught were nonviolent.
Greenpeace USA says that the support it offered to the Indigenous-led protests was minimal, and that it was one of many organizations present at the camps. Several who testified said that Greenpeace only provided help because it was asked.
Greenpeace International and Greenpeace Fund, meanwhile, say they never sent anyone to the demonstrations or provided any funding or resources to support the cause.
Cox also told jurors that Greenpeace maliciously circulated nine defamatory statements to harm the company. The organization successfully persuaded some banks to withdraw their financial support for the project, he said.
“I call them malicious because they are strategic, they are dangerous and they are manipulative,” Cox said.
The nine statements include claims that the Dakota Access Pipeline crosses through tribal land, that Energy Transfer deliberately destroyed sacred cultural sites during its construction and that Energy Transfer’s private security contractors and law enforcement used violence against protesters.
Cox said that Greenpeace witnesses admitted to publishing these claims without asking for Energy Transfer or law enforcement’s side of the story. Greenpeace made these claims in order to turn the public against the company, he added.
“She knows exactly where to stick the knife in,” Cox said of one statement he attributed to Annie Leonard, former Greenpeace executive director.
Cox pointed to previous testimony by Ashton Hayes, a high-ranking finance administrator for Energy Transfer. Hayes said he believed Greenpeace’s actions negatively impacted the company’s rapport with banks, Cox said.
Speaking on behalf of Greenpeace, Jack told the jury Cox was trying to “gaslight” them.
Energy Transfer is using “boogeyman terms designed to get you worked up,” he said.
Dozens of media outlets and other groups circulated the claims before Greenpeace, he said. Some of the statements were made in open letters to banks that Greenpeace co-signed with hundreds of other organizations, according to records shown during the trial.
Greenpeace’s statements also relied largely on first-hand accounts from Standing Rock leaders as well as people who attended the protests, witnesses said.
Current and former Greenpeace employees also testified that they believed the statements to be true at the time they made them, with some saying they still stand by the veracity of the claims.
Greenpeace International was not involved in seven of the nine alleged defamatory statements. Greenpeace Fund says it did not make any of them.
Jack also disputed Cox’s claims that Greenpeace’s actions caused a five-month construction delay for the pipeline, and led Energy Transfer to delay refinancing its loan and incur unanticipated financing costs.
Expert testimony and records previously presented in court indicate that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to delay granting an easement to allow the pipeline to be built underneath the Missouri River pushed back completion of the pipeline, Jack said.
He said Energy Transfer board minutes suggest that the company delayed refinancing its loan because of an ongoing lawsuit by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Army Corps, which created greater uncertainty about the future of the project.
Jack also argued that neither law enforcement nor multiple Native activists asked to testify in the case believed that Greenpeace was a major presence at the demonstrations.
One Lakota organizer, Nick Tilsen, testified earlier in the trial that he considered the idea that Greenpeace organized the protests “paternalistic.”
The lawsuit was first filed in 2019 and has thousands of docket entries. During his closing speech, Jack said that the case has about 900,000 documents.
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https://northdakotamonitor.com/2025/03/17/greenpeace-case-in-hands-of-jury-as-energy-transfer-makes-case-for-800-million-in-damages/
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