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

northdakotamonitor.com

21–30 of 245 posts

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

#21
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rough jury pool. 75.36% for Trump in the latest election, and one presumes a lot of energy sector employment.

Maybe? The judge, and the lawyers involved have the right to reject jurors that might prejudice a trail.

Yes, but that's a lot easier to manage in a county that doesn't have only 30k people in it.

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

#22
post #12

> 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?

SLAPP as in Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. To keep the dissenting voices quiet and to scare other groups from protesting. Modus operandi for many industries.

https://www.the-case.eu/latest/number-of-slapps-in-europe-co...

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

#23
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claims were for defamation and incitement: > A Morton County jury on Wednesday ordered Greenpeace to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline, finding that the environmental group incited illegal behavior by anti-pipeline protesters and defamed the company. > The nine-person jury delivered a verdict in favor of Energy Transfer on most counts, awarding more than $660 milli…

Rough jury pool. 75.36% for Trump in the latest election, and one presumes a lot of energy sector employment.

North Dakota voted 67% overall for Trump, this is not too far from being representative of the general population. Considering that anyone who is openly hostile against energy companies is going to be removed during selection I don’t see the jury as the issue.

Edit: and considering this was the Southwest district, looking at results by county, 75% seems about right. This isn’t necessarily a biased jury in the sense that selection was unfair, this is probably the makeup you’d get with a fair selection. https://apnews.com/projects/election-results-2024/north-dako...

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

#24
post #8

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 wr…

But restricting supply raises prices and naturally encourages sustainable energy. That kind of change is self reinforcing. Government incentives disappear at the change of every administration.

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

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rough jury pool. 75.36% for Trump in the latest election, and one presumes a lot of energy sector employment.

North Dakota voted 67% overall for Trump, this is not too far from being representative of the general population. Considering that anyone who is openly hostile against energy companies is going to be removed during selection I don’t see the jury as the issue. Edit: and considering this was the Southwest district, looking at results by county, 75% seems about right. This isn’t necessarily a biased jury in the sense t…

People can hide their biases (or claim they can set them aside, which will often be acceptable during jury selection), and in a county with 30k people you're gonna run into people who recognize you at the grocery store a lot. This certainly wouldn't have been a pressure-free scenario.

It can be quite hard to get a jury to go against a locally powerful large employer in a small town.

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

#26
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.

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

#27

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.

In what way?

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

#28

> 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?

Some of the jurors had financial ties Energy Transfer, the district is heavily conservative and economically dependent on the oil industry. The deck was massively stacked against Greenpeace at trial.

Energy Transfer had previously attempted other suits which failed to get any traction because the claims are essentially Trump-style conspiracy theories about who is "pulling the strings" and "paying for" a massive decentralized protest movement. But they got lucky on this one. One of the advantages of having so much money you can just burn it on questionable lawsuits until one succeeds.

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

#29
post #24
post #8

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 wr…

But restricting supply raises prices and naturally encourages sustainable energy. That kind of change is self reinforcing. Government incentives disappear at the change of every administration.

Oil is a global commodity. Its price is set across all supply sources. Restricting its movement from Canada to the US doesn’t actually change the price much at all. It just makes the supply more vulnerable to disruption. That dirty shale oil only comes out of the ground when prices are really high. Otherwise it’s not worth it. If prices are high it will come out of the ground and get burned. The only question is where and who has access to it.

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

#30
post #16
post #8

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 wr…

> 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. I don't have much time for Greenpeace. Much of their activism has never been science based, and usually involves criminal acts against property. History will not be kind to them. Their only highlight is 'saving' the wh…

won't someone think of the property??!?
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