America's Talking - Jury Finds Greenpeace Liable Over Dakota Pipeline Protests, Awards $660 Million

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

(The Center Square) – A North Dakota jury of nine on Wednesday found environmental activist group Greenpeace liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages in a years-long lawsuit brought by Energy Transfer, the company that built the Dakota Access Pipeline that became the subject of sometimes violent protests and international attention. Energy Transfer sued Greenpeace for $300 million over the protests that delayed the pipeline's completion by five months, but jurors awarded the energy infrastructure giant and its subsidiary, Dakota Access LLC, a total of more than $660 million.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Full story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/north_dakota/article_03f0a15d-8797-472f-b419-08eff6e7f891.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to American Focus. I'm Eliana Kernodle. The North Dakota jury found Greenpeace liable for damages surrounding the Dakota Access pipeline protests. Joining me with more on this story is the Center Square's reporter Morgan Sweeney. Morgan, can you tell us a little bit more about this? Who was involved? So it was energy transfer, which is the company that's behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, which runs from North Dakota down to Illinois. It was installed in 2016 and 20, 2017 and the Environmental Advocacy Group Greenpeace. And what were they alleging in this lawsuit?

So energy transfer was alleging that Greenpeace, well, they were involved in some major protests that happened over the pipeline back when it was being installed. And energy transfer was alleging that Greenpeace had trespassed, aided and energy transfer. abetted to trespass, interfered with construction equipment, and been involved in defamation. So then what was the verdict from the jury? So the jury was not kind to Greenpeace. It found them liable for close to $700 million in damages. I think it's more around $660 million. So they awarded compensatory damages, which is like paying the company back for profit and things that it lost. And then they also awarded a lot of punitive damages, which is more just to kind of punish Greenpeace, so to speak, for the things that energy transfer said that they did. And the lead lawyer for this

lawsuit, Trey Cox, he was kind of highlighting the difference between peaceful pro-te. protests and violence. Now, these protests gained a lot of attention back in 2016 and 2017, but it's been a little while since then. Can you tell us more about what happened in the protests that led to this lawsuit? Yeah. So the protests occurred because of a Native American tribe that is near a site where the pipeline was being installed. So they're known as the Standing Rock protest. It's the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their reservation. Like I said, wasn't far from one of the places that the pipeline was going to run through. And the tribe was concerned that the pipeline would leak into the local water supply because it would be running under Lake Oaxe, which is a lake that a lake that occurs along the Missouri River. And the protests grew very, very large. Thousands and thousands of people came from other states and kind of all over the place and joined this movement that was going on, this encampment, not far from Bismarck, North Dakota's capital city.

And law enforcement has said that protesters through different items at them like human. and feces and water bottles full of urine and burning logs. And they use things like fence posts and that some people had knives and things like that. And protesters, when they talk about it, say that it was a peaceful protest, except for law enforcement and private security's actions against them. So there was an instance where some dogs were brought out by either law enforcement or private security or both. I'm not sure on that. And that was a very, very widely talked about incident. And so protesters basically just said that law enforcement used undue force on them. They also used a water cannon on the crowd and very cold weather and some other things like that.

And so there was a lot of backlash over that. So Mr. Cox argued that peaceful protest is not involve trespass and it doesn't involve interfering with private property. And there were protesters who would lock themselves to construction equipment. There's also some protesters who poured sand and engines and cut wires and things like that. And so Mr. Cox was trying to get damages for those things. And so $700 million is no small sum. How will this impact Greenpeace and their work? I think it's kind of unclear at this point. Greenpeace has said things like if they had to pay $300 million or more, it was going to ruin them, basically. Others have said, yeah, this is going to be the ruination of Greenpeace. piece. But they have appealed the jury's verdict. And so I guess it just kind of remains to be seen, you know, what the next lawsuit brings and if it does anything that happened in this one.

Well, Morgan, thank you for your insights on this story. We can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com.