A North Dakota jury has ruled that Greenpeace must pay more than $660 million in damages to Dallas-based oil and gas company Energy Transfer, finding the environmental group liable for defamation and other claims related to protests against the Dakota Access pipeline.
The nine-person jury delivered its verdict on March 19 in a lawsuit brought by Energy Transfer Partners, which sought hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from Greenpeace. The case stemmed from the environmental group’s 2016–2017 protests against the pipeline’s Missouri River crossing, located upstream of a tribal reservation. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has long opposed the project, citing risks to its water supply and sacred burial grounds.
