[HN Gopher] Judge finalizes order for Greenpeace to pay $345M in...
___________________________________________________________________
Judge finalizes order for Greenpeace to pay $345M in ND oil
pipeline case
Author : gmays
Score : 165 points
Date : 2026-03-02 14:28 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (northdakotamonitor.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (northdakotamonitor.com)
| oxqbldpxo wrote:
| Drive less, if possible.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| > 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?
| lkbm wrote:
| They specifically _weren 't_ found liable for on the ground
| activity, so the fact that only six employees were on the
| ground seems like a bit of a red herring.
|
| > how does this happen? did greenepeace just run a bad trial?
| or lose all public trust?
|
| Alternative possibility: they were actually guilty. Seems
| likely. The idea that Greenpeace was intentionally spreading
| misinformation doesn't require a big leap of faith.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Unlike oil companies who would of course never do such a
| thing.
| b112 wrote:
| The climate can't sue if you lie about it.
|
| Companies and people can.
| lkbm wrote:
| They sure do. They've also been sued for it, too, because
| it's bad. It's also bad for Greenpeace to do it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There is absolutely no way the damage is that large and
| this seems to be mostly a revenge action by a community
| in which Greenpeace - or any other environmental
| organization - would never get a fair trial to begin
| with.
| terminalshort wrote:
| The article doesn't mention it, but it could be punitive
| damages
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| > They specifically weren't found liable for on the ground
| activity, so the fact that only six employees were on the
| ground seems like a bit of a red herring.
|
| I think that's not what the article is saying, although I
| read it that way too at first. Greenpeace USA, the
| organization whose six employees were on the ground, was
| found liable for "almost all claims"; it's only Greenpeace
| International and Greenpeace Fund, their sibling
| organizations, who were found not to be "responsible for the
| alleged on-the-ground harms committed by protesters".
| lkbm wrote:
| Ah, good catch. I misread.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Or maybe, just maybe, they actually did unreasonably damage the
| pipeline company's reputation, in a way that is outside the
| legally-recognized bounds of free speech. Maybe justice
| actually was done.
|
| (Note well: I haven't been following this case closely enough
| to say. But you should at least consider that as a
| possibility.)
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| this is only possible if you can somehow square a pipeline
| company's activities as intersecting with the arc of justice.
| as it stands, they're actively hastening the degradation of
| land, water, wildlife, human life and surrounding climates
| everywhere they operate.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Regardless of what you think of pipelines, under the
| current system they have the protection of the law. Courts
| are judging based on what the _law_ says, not on the sense
| of "justice" that you seem to be operating on. As you
| yourself said, they may not intersect.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| kind of an insulting position to assume i (or anyone else
| you might be educating) don't know that courts ostensibly
| rule on law/precedent.
|
| i'm specifically responding to your use of the word
| "justice" and how those two do not always align - it's a
| lack of precise definition, or a disagreement in terms.
| this is one of the clearest examples of that phenomenon
| that exists, especially when you consider the lengths the
| fossil fuel industry has gone to hide and misdirect
| evidence of the negative environmental impacts of their
| business model.
| bjourne wrote:
| Does your theory pass the sniff test? How reasonable is it to
| believe that Greenpeace's "defamation" cost the company
| hundreds of millions of dollars? Why is $345 the correct
| three-digit number of millions for the reputation damage
| Greenpeace caused?
| shagie wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer.
|
| I believe it's a question of "who is found liable" and then
| "what is the damages" and then the damages are split between
| those who are found liable.
|
| If it was Greenpeace and {Some Org} that were both found
| liable, then that could be split 90% {Some Org} and 10%
| Greenpeace.
|
| However, if only Greenpeace was found liable it would be 100%
| Greenpeace despite how little interaction they had.
| DrBazza wrote:
| 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 million in
| damages to Energy Transfer and Dakota Access LLC.
|
| It seems like the jury did its job on the evidence presented.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Rough jury pool. 75.36% for Trump in the latest election, and
| one presumes a _lot_ of energy sector employment.
| DrBazza wrote:
| Maybe? The judge, and the lawyers involved have the right
| to reject jurors that might prejudice a trail.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes, but that's a lot easier to manage in a county that
| doesn't have only 30k people in it.
| DannyBee wrote:
| They applied for change of venue 3 times, lost all 3
| times, and appealed it to the north dakota supreme court,
| and lost there too.
|
| Overall, they could not make the showing necessary.
|
| I read the motions and responses, and was not
| particularly impressed with their arguments for change of
| venue.
| hrimfaxi wrote:
| Lawyers don't have unlimited removals though.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| Not peremptory strikes, but you have unlimited removals
| for cause (and admittedly a steep appellate hill to climb
| if they're unfairly denied)
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| You're gonna have a hell of a time construing a quality
| (energy sector or few steps removed employment) as
| "cause" when it's applicable to a large minority if not
| majority of the jury pool.
|
| The judge might allow it, but the odds are long and the
| next judge will certainly allow an appeal on those
| grounds so you probably don't even gain much except time.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| 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...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 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.
| reenorap wrote:
| Did you feel that the jury in New York City (76% voted for
| Biden in 2020) that convicted Trump of falsifying business
| records similarly corrupt?
| asah wrote:
| lol, nothing to do with Biden - Trump soiled his brand in
| NYC over 4+ decades of screwing people over, not paying
| bills around town, "strategic bankruptcies" etc.
|
| It's telling that "trump" buildings rebranded in NYC...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| NYC has a... slightly larger population to pull from,
| which makes the chances of being recognized at the store
| quite a bit lower.
|
| Convicting Trump doesn't throw half of NYC onto the dole,
| either.
| watwut wrote:
| My comment was flagged. But, basic assumption should not
| be that Trump voters and Biden ones are symmetrical.
|
| One group finds candidate who defrauds more then any
| other politician before appealing and right kind manly.
| They see him sexually harassing women appealing. Moreover
| all fascists vote for Trump. Both sides have bad people
| in ... but Trump side is defined by them.
|
| There is no symetry here. This particular choice is
| literally showing that yes, you are more likely to be
| unfair kind of juror.
| shrubby wrote:
| 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.
| shrubby wrote:
| https://www.the-case.eu/latest/number-of-slapps-in-europe-
| co...
| terminalshort wrote:
| A SLAPP is a frivolous lawsuit that the plaintiff has no
| chance of winning. In this case they won a judgment, so it's
| the opposite of that.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| That's not technically what a SLAPP is. The reason it is
| called a _strategic lawsuit_ is frequently that it will
| cost the defendant so much to defend themselves that they
| opt to settle rather than risk that cost. Even if the
| plaintiff is unlikely to win, it is rarely a "no chance"
| situation, and with judge/district shopping, it is quite
| possible for large corporations to move further from "no
| chance" than an individual or non-profit might.
| some_random wrote:
| That is objectively not what happened here though, the point
| of SLAPP is that it's a frivolous suit that's meant to just
| exhaust the resources of the "dissenting voices". They won
| this suit and honestly it's not hard to believe that
| Greenpeace is guilty to some degree even if proving it is.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Well it is very hard to believe they're guilty, at least to
| me. Too bad the news report does not provide any actual
| information about the case and the evidence (actual
| journalism beyond clickbaity headlines).
|
| In environmental circles, Greenpeace is very well-known to
| be traitors working with big corporations to launder their
| image. They're opposed to sabotage and revolutionary
| tactics. Their activities are mostly fundraising and legal
| proceedings, and on the rare instance they perform so-
| called civil disobedience (such as deploying banners on
| nuclear plants), it is in very orderly fashion that doesn't
| provide much economic harm.
|
| As a left-wing environmentalist, i wish such a strong voice
| as Greenpeace was capable to incite people to rise against
| the greedy corporations destroying our planet. I just don't
| see that happening, neither here in France nor in the USA.
| terminalshort wrote:
| > i wish such a strong voice as Greenpeace was capable to
| incite people to rise against the greedy corporations
| destroying our planet.
|
| Posted from your iphone while driving to the gas station
| to fill up? Where did you fly to for your last vacation?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Not this tired nonsense again.
|
| Contrasting specific technological and social artifacts
| with a form of economic organization and legal structures
| without noting how different they are is a cheap and weak
| form of argument.
|
| If you want to insist that only greedy corporations could
| have made portable hand-held network connected computing
| devices possible, then make that point. If you want to
| insist that there could be no automobile or refueling
| system without a system in which corporate profits
| primarily are directed towards capital rather than labor,
| then make that point. If you find it impossible that
| powered flight would exist at a price where most people
| could afford it without specific laws controlling
| corporate liability and legal fiduciary responsibility,
| than make that point.
|
| But "ah, so you use human-created technology while
| criticizing the organizations that make it" isn't really
| the winning argument that you appear to think it is.
| terminalshort wrote:
| What does any of that have to do with anything?
|
| > If you want to insist that only greedy corporations
| could have made portable hand-held network connected
| computing devices possible, then make that point.
|
| It burns oil and emits CO2. Doesn't matter who makes it
| or if they are "greedy." Physics doesn't care about human
| emotions.
|
| > If you want to insist that there could be no automobile
| or refueling system without a system in which corporate
| profits primarily are directed towards capital rather
| than labor, then make that point.
|
| It burns oil and emits CO2. Physics doesn't care about
| accounting.
|
| > If you find it impossible that powered flight would
| exist at a price where most people could afford it
| without specific laws controlling corporate liability and
| legal fiduciary responsibility, than make that point.
|
| It burns oil and emits CO2. It doesn't matter what the
| price to the end user is or who liability. Physics does
| not care about lawyers.
|
| > But "ah, so you use human-created technology while
| criticizing the organizations that make it" isn't really
| the winning argument that you appear to think it is.
|
| If your criticism is about global warming, then yes it is
| a wining argument because the organizations are
| irrelevant. It burns oil and emits CO2. Physics doesn't
| care about human organizations.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The GP made an observation about "greedy corporations".
|
| You sarcastically wrote
|
| > Posted from your iphone while driving to the gas
| station to fill up? Where did you fly to for your last
| vacation?
|
| as if using any of those technologies means that you have
| no standing to criticize "greedy corporations".
|
| I've pointed out the (potential) disconnect between the
| technologies and the corporations, and you've now
| wandered off into "fossil fuels do stuff, physics
| matters" which of course is true but as before, has
| nothing to do with someone criticizing what they see
| as/claim are "greedy corporations".
| terminalshort wrote:
| Nice try, but I'm not stupid enough to fall for your
| deflection. GP did not complain about "greedy
| corporations." He complained about "greedy corporations
| destroying our planet." They aren't destroying our
| planet. You, GP, and I are destroying our planet. But
| unlike you and GP, I am an adult and I don't try to blame
| other people for my actions.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > the point of SLAPP is that it's a frivolous suit
|
| The _point_ is to shut people up. Lawyers don 't like
| filing literally frivolous suits, that type of activity
| gets you disbarred.
| laughing_man wrote:
| In theory, yes. But does that actually happen IRL? I've
| never heard of a lawyer getting disbarred for the quality
| of suits he or she is filing.
|
| Many years ago in Northern CA we had a lawyer that was
| basically going around filing suits against everyone she
| came in contact with as a way to pay the bills. She was
| eventually declared a "vexatious litigant" and had to get
| a judge's permission before she could sue anyone in the
| future, but they didn't disbar her.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _SLAPP as in Strategic Lawsuit Against Public
| Participation._
|
| Unfortunately North Dakota is one of the minority of states
| without anti-SLAPP laws.
| thecrash wrote:
| 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| The protests involved what activists call "direct action,"
| which involves trespassing on private property, blockading
| workers, or damaging equipment in an effort to prevent
| otherwise lawful activity. For example, activists admitted to
| setting fire to equipment and pipeline valves in an effort to
| stop construction: https://www.kcci.com/article/2-women-admit-
| to-causing-damage.... That's legally straightforward conduct
| outside 1A protections.
|
| The more tenuous thing here is proving Greenpeace incited
| people to do that. Without having seen the evidence, I'm
| guessing there were internal documents that were bad for
| Greenpeace. Activist organizations sometimes adopt pretty
| militant rhetoric in an effort to get protesters fired up. I
| bet these internal documents could seem sinister to a jury of
| ordinary people.
|
| The legal issue here is that there should be a very high bar
| for saying that first amendment protected speech amounts to
| incitement. But that's not a principle of law as far as I'm
| aware. So any organization that adopts this militant posture
| for marketing reasons (which is a lot of them these days) could
| run the risk of that being used against them if any of the
| protesters end up damaging or destroying property.
| hotstickyballs wrote:
| Direct action is literally their policy
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| And in this case the jury found them on the hook to pay for
| the results.
|
| I'm not sure what they were expecting. Direct action agains
| an oil pipeline in ND is gonna go over about as well as
| direct action tourism in Florida. If by some miracle you
| get a judge sympathetic to your cause you won't get a jury
| that is. The local people want this industry, generally
| speaking.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| That's very true.
|
| The frozen plains of North Dakota aren't worth much
| without oil. With oil, they provide good paying jobs to
| people who otherwise won't have them.
|
| I lived in the next state south for many years. Oil is
| definitely popular with the people of North Dakota.
| ckrapu wrote:
| With all due respect, I disagree.
|
| I loved the winters. I loved the people. I loved how its
| natural beauty was subtle and rewarded the patient,
| unlike El Capitan or the Black Hills. The economy was
| fine before oil appeared.
| NewJazz wrote:
| https://www.dmr.nd.gov/dmr/news/studies-underscore-oil-
| and-g...
| magicalist wrote:
| > _The legal issue here is that there should be a very high
| bar for saying that first amendment protected speech amounts
| to incitement. But that's not a principle of law as far as
| I'm aware._
|
| I don't understand the distinction you're making here. Isn't
| there being a high bar for saying that first amendment
| protected speech amounts to incitement literally a principle
| of modern first amendment law (Brandenburg etc)?
|
| > _So any organization that adopts this militant posture for
| marketing reasons (which is a lot of them these days) could
| run the risk of that being used against them if any of the
| protesters end up damaging or destroying property._
|
| Even the way you write this makes it sound like you know it's
| problematic too.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| It's not protected speech to direct illegal action from
| afar, so it doesn't matter one whit if Greenpeace was there
| six times or six thousand or zero.
| kombine wrote:
| > The protests involved what activists call "direct action,"
| which involves trespassing on private property, blockading
| workers, or damaging equipment in an effort to prevent
| otherwise lawful activity. For example, activists admitted to
| setting fire to equipment and pipeline valves in an effort to
| stop construction
|
| Decades and centuries from now our descendants will be
| dealing with the consequences of the destroyed climate and
| wonder why we punished the only people who tried to do
| something about it while justifying it by "the laws".
| newsoftheday wrote:
| > "the laws"
|
| We live under law or we die under anarchy.
| thunderfork wrote:
| You can die under law, too.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Little known fact is that you can die over law too.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There are many other reasons that can kill you under the
| law besides anarchy, one of those is climate change and
| GP definitely has a very valid point.
|
| Clearly the 'drill-baby-drill' crowd doesn't like
| Greenpeace at all and is doing what they can to muzzle
| activists because they know that if they manage to
| squelch Greenpeace then many lesser funded organizations
| will not be able to do anything all all. But history
| doesn't give a damn about any of that.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > Greenpeace USA, not Greenpeace Fund or Greenpeace
| International
|
| Why is something like this allowed to exist... Stacking
| entities and funneling wealth around in the guise of a noble
| cause.
| esafak wrote:
| It may well not exist any more under the financial burden of
| this sentence.
| tlb wrote:
| International orgs usually need a company incorporated in
| every country they're working in. You need it to pay
| employees, for instance.
| mullingitover wrote:
| You're going to lose it when you discover that stacking
| entities and funneling wealth around happens as routinely as
| eating lunch, and it's the noble cause part that's the
| outlier here.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| You know that 99% of companies with revenues above say $1B do
| exactly this, just in the guise of often less noble causes?
|
| Fun fact, Monster Cables owns no patents or IP (or
| effectively none), it just licenses them all from the "wholly
| independent, arms-length" Monster Cables Bermuda, Inc.
| entity.
| kristjansson wrote:
| We need David Macaulay to add a book on corporate structures
| to his repertoire. Any organization operating at anywhere
| close to household-name scale is a collection of cooperating
| legal entities.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Countries usually require you to create a local corporation,
| non-profit, or similar, if you have any revenue or donations.
| The local entity is what will file the tax paperwork.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| No, their lawyers did a fairly decent job of demonstrating that
| Greenpeace wasn't coordinating the radical protestors that were
| showing up to the protests, anymore than MAGA was coordinating
| all of the violent shootings by right-wingers last year.
|
| They were never going to win the trial. More than half of the
| jury pool had ties to the pipeline industry. They were always
| going to find against Greenpeace, and they went to fairly
| extreme lengths to ignore the evidence presented to come up
| with a ridiculous damage award far in excess of the company's
| actual damages (even accounting for a punitive damage markup).
|
| Will they win on appeal? Maybe pre-Trump they had a chance, but
| right-wing judges no longer feel bound by the law, reason, or
| equity.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| North Dakota jury breaking things to please Daddy T. On a
| larger scale, jury trials for defamation are a ticking time
| bomb catastrophe, long term incompatible with free speech.
| Source: was on a defamation jury and it was an utter clown
| fiesta and pretty close to ended my remaining faith in the US
| legal system and the population as a whole.
| nradov wrote:
| Jury trials for defamation have been a thing since forever
| and haven't caused a catastrophe yet. Jury trials
| occasionally get things wrong as a matter of law, which is
| why we have an appeals process.
| oofbey wrote:
| 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.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > 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 whales. For a while.
| valec wrote:
| won't someone think of the _property??!?_
| verdverm wrote:
| prosperity comes from property, just add si /s
| terminalshort wrote:
| Yes I will think of the property because private property
| rights are critical and I 100% support private property
| owners using violence to defend their property from vandals
| and thieves.
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| It's already too late. We passed the point of no return. There
| was a blip where every outlet was saying that the point of no
| return was like 6 months away than nothing.. We shot right past
| it.
| oofbey wrote:
| Strange take. What does that mean? Give up because we can't
| do anything - "it's already too late"? So burn all the oil
| because YOLO?
|
| Or maybe those people drawing hard lines in the sand were
| exaggerating to drive urgency and get attention? Sometimes
| people whose stated goals you agree with say and do things
| which are wrong.
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| It's too late. Look at the science.
|
| Also I never mentioned just give up. I just said it's
| already too late. That's reality. What you do next is your
| choice. But don't put words in my mouth.
| some_random wrote:
| It's never too late, that's not what "the science" says
| it's what the clickbait vulture news bullshit you're
| reading is saying. The real science on the matter is that
| every day things get just a little bit worse, and every
| improvement makes things just a little bit better.
| There's no magic cliff, no point of no return, just one
| day after another.
| realreality wrote:
| There are tipping points, when warming accelerates and
| becomes irreversible.
|
| There's some debate in "the science" about how quickly
| we'll reach that point. Limiting warming to +2degC was
| not a scientific position; it was political, based on
| what people thought was achievable. Before the Paris
| Agreement, 2deg was not considered "safe".
|
| Anyway, it turns out we're going to zoom past 2deg in the
| next couple of decades.
| xoofoog wrote:
| 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.
| oofbey wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| No, restricting supply when it exists just turns people
| paying the higher prices against you. When the supply
| restrictions are in fundamentals it can work for you. When
| supply restrictions are on something few people care about it
| can work for you. However the majority of people
| (particularly in ND) drive and feel the cost of gas - often
| they feel these costs even more than they really affect the
| budget because they are visible every time you buy it in ways
| the things that have a larger effect on their budget are not.
|
| If you want to encourage sustainable energy you need to make
| that your focus. Make it cheaper. Ignore oil and fight laws
| that make it harder to build sustainable energy. ND has great
| wind potential (they get 40% of their electric from wind
| already), but it could be better (they have a small
| population - which means they can export wind energy to
| Minnesota or if we build transmission lines even farther).
|
| When you focus on raising oil prices you ensure that your
| side gets voted out in the next election and your gains are
| undone. When you focus on building renewable energy you get
| something that can stay. (Just don't build only on the white
| house as that can be quickly removed - build everywhere so
| removal is expensive)
| staplers wrote:
| Also for the ND pipeline, I think it does relatively little to
| change the economics of fossil fuels.
|
| This is ignoring the issue of tribal sovereignty and water
| rights which is where most of the issue lies imo. No one is
| trying to ruin the economy, they simply want untainted natural
| resources on their own property.
|
| If this pipeline was going through disneyland, i don't think
| you'd hear popular arguments about disney trying to ruin the
| oil economy.
| oofbey wrote:
| I think that's half right. We are absolutely horrendous to
| natives around here. But that's not why Greenpeace got
| involved, nor why most of the left cares about this issue.
|
| If the pipeline was going through Disneyland I think you'd
| still see the same people up in arms protesting. They'd just
| be searching for a different justification.
| terminalshort wrote:
| This is a complete load of shit. Oil is trucked back and
| forth over those roads all day and night, and that has a much
| higher leakage rate than a pipeline. NIMBYs never come out
| and say they just don't want something built. They always
| have some bullshit excuse like this.
| alexgoodhart wrote:
| I mean what you just said is the huge load of shit. There
| are interesting differences in risk and pollution between
| trucking and piping, but they're not nearly as black and
| white as you claim and they don't require acrimony. Calm
| the hell down?
| thecrash wrote:
| This case is not important because of Greenpeace, it's
| important because of the implications for free speech in the
| US. They are not being bankrupted because they took the wrong
| stance on nuclear, they're being bankrupted for supposed
| defamation and incitement against a major energy corporation.
|
| This is a precedent that will be used to attack all kinds of
| civil society organizations when they threaten the profits of
| major corporate interests. Including the civil society
| organizations which you do agree with.
| oofbey wrote:
| I think our society would be better off if everybody did less
| incitement in their political dialogue. It's become all too
| common for political discourse to become unhinged. So in that
| sense, I think this precedent is also fine.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| What does setting things on fire have to do with freedom of
| speech?
| oofbey wrote:
| I think this is how it goes: The people who set things on
| fire weren't directly associated with Greenpeace. But the
| argument is that Greenpeace's rhetoric incited them to do
| so. So it becomes a freedom of speech issue. If you tell
| people something is evil and must be burned, are you
| responsible for that thing getting torched?
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I have some inside knowledge here. When I was in college, I was
| very idealistic. I was in a special Greenpeace program where
| they took college students and trained them to become
| environmental activists. Picture a semester-long, hands-on
| training course.
|
| You actually fully go out into the field to run campaigns and
| meet everyone from the President of Greenpeace to the front-end
| activist hanging banners and whatnot.
|
| I actually liked the President and DC lobbyist folks more than
| the weridos out and about dropping banners and doing the
| extreme stuff.
|
| I walked away being kind of turned off from the Organization
| and realized a lot of these folks were not pragmatic and more
| dogmatic than anything else. Don't get me wrong, I am very
| grateful and had a blast, but I dropped out of college and
| became a software engineer instead of an activist.
| flybrand wrote:
| I had a similar experience with the US EPA while in
| undergrad. It was a shorter experience, but it really changed
| my view of the organization.
| triceratops wrote:
| > I think Greenpeace did as much as anybody to turn the world
| against nuclear power
|
| I think the nuclear industry didn't do itself any favors. And
| the oil companies didn't want it to succeed either and did its
| best to hobble it. The environmental groups are a convenient
| patsy to take the blame for the outcome. If Greenpeace is so
| powerful why hasn't it been able to end whaling or the oil
| industry?
| nradov wrote:
| I agree. In the long term we need to reduce fossil fuel usage
| but in the short term, restricting pipeline construction means
| that more petroleum products are transported by rail cars which
| is a lot dirtier and more dangerous. We have to take a
| pragmatic harm minimization approach rather than being
| idealistic.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Union_Pacific_oil_train_f...
| hermannj314 wrote:
| 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.
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| >There is an asymmetry in the type of evil our society allows.
|
| Makes sense. Because society is evil, therefore our society
| allows evil.
| beambot wrote:
| They just need to do what oil & gas (and other "dirty"
| industries) do to avoid reputcussions: form lots of shell
| companies to shield the parent. It becomes a hydra of
| corporations kinda like terrorist cells.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| No the way to do it is this:
|
| Break the law, make $1B of illegal money, then get dragged to
| court and pay a $200M fine - while you keep most of the profit
| and your market position you illegally gained.
|
| Bonus: Shield all managers from personal accountability, best
| in a way that they got their bonus and salary and moved on a
| long time ago before the verdict hits.
|
| Best: Not get to court, but make an $100M outside court
| settlement.
| some_random wrote:
| That's not true, they have an extremely robust pipeline in the
| form of donations that stream in as long as they publicly Do
| Something.
| seydor wrote:
| Greg Hirsch got paid
| nickorlow wrote:
| Can't make a tomelette...
| unixuser7104 wrote:
| 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.
| iooi wrote:
| In what way?
| pwillia7 wrote:
| I'd like to hear your comments on what happened from your POV
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| 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.
| morkalork wrote:
| That's a hell of a cynnical conspiracy but then again, people
| like Jill Stein exist.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| This is funny. I didn't know who Jill Stein is, so I asked an
| LLM about how she is relevant. Instead of explaining how she
| might be involved in evil conspiracies, it thinks that Jill
| Stein is relevant because, "like a charged college kid," she
| was apparently at this Greenpeace protest! Hilarious.
| realreality wrote:
| She ran for President in 2024. Where were you?
| tototrains wrote:
| Mossad is trafficking children to billionaires for blackmail
| material, and it's just led directly to a war on Iran because
| the president of the US is in CSAM.
|
| No conspiracy is too cynical. If you can think of it, they
| can think of it.
| Schmerika wrote:
| The Harvard educated doctor, magna cum laude, with a long
| history of fighting for a better America for all Americans.
|
| The Jewish lady who was smeared as a Russian agent because
| she was at a diplomatic dinner that Putin also attended.
|
| The woman who challenged election results in 2016, only for
| the response to be to make it harder to question election
| results (and that certainly never blew-back on all of us).
|
| The lady who was then put under Senate investigation for _two
| years_ over the so-called collusion with Russia which turned
| up _precisely zero evidence_.
|
| Who put up the single best fight against two entrenched pro-
| genocide parties of anyone else in America's 350 million
| people.
|
| The 2024 candidate with the highest vote to campaign funds
| ratio of any candidate by a factor of about ten despite
| having a tiny fraction of the election coverage.
|
| What exactly are you saying the comparison is here? That
| Americans tend to cheer for the villains and boo the heroes
| just because the media tells them to?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Look at who Just Stop Oil is funded by and whether you think
| people like their actions.
| DrScientist wrote:
| 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.
| jonas21 wrote:
| I assume that _is_ the point of having a Greenpeace USA -- to
| shield Greenpeace International and other Greenpeace
| organizations from liability. And it seems to have mostly
| worked.
| DrScientist wrote:
| Looking at the history ( back in the 1970s )- it appears to
| be in part the reverse - when Greenpeace USA was created, the
| original greenpeace, based in Vancouver, had a quarter of a
| million debt - and there was a bit of a fight over it.
|
| https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/12/11/TEXT-OMITTED-FROM-
| SO...
| rayiner wrote:
| That's specifically illegal under bankruptcy law. It's called
| fraudulent transfer.
| DrScientist wrote:
| Yet large companies appear to get away with it all the time -
| for example the so called Texas two step.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_two-step_bankruptcy
|
| In my view the best way to get this sort of stuff banned is
| to start using it yourself.
| reenorap wrote:
| J&J tried it but was ultimately rejected last year.
| triceratops wrote:
| Somewhat different circumstances.
|
| Summarizing Matt Levine's various columns on the issue
| from memory:
|
| 1. J&J lost a lawsuit about talc and the winner was
| awarded $Xb (or maybe $XXXm, my memory is fuzzy) in
| damages.
|
| 2. J&J transferred $XXb to a new company.
|
| 3. It let the new company take on current and future
| liabilities for judgements on the talc issue.
|
| 4. J&J then had the new company declare bankruptcy. The
| bankruptcy process is designed to pay out money fairly to
| all creditors. The new company's only creditors were the
| plaintiffs in the lawsuit J&J lost + any future
| claimants. So this wasn't necessarily nefarious.
|
| 5. A judge rejected the bankruptcy because J&J had funded
| the company with $XXb and that was in excess of its
| current liabilities. As Levine put it, the company wasn't
| "bankrupt enough" yet.
|
| I didn't keep up with the story after that so maybe I
| missed something.
| reenorap wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean. I think we are saying the
| same thing. The strategy to use Texas Two Step failed in
| 2025 and J&J gave up, and now they are going back to the
| regular way of resolving the litigation.
| triceratops wrote:
| The thread we're in started with the discussion of
| fraudulent transfers:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47220263
|
| You said the Texas Two Step can't be used for fraudulent
| transfers (or at least, that's how I interpreted) and
| offered J&J's case as an example. My reply to that is
| J&J's Texas Two Step failed for a different reason,
| unrelated to fraudulent transfers.
| reenorap wrote:
| No.
|
| My OP said that Texas Two step was used all the time. I
| said J&J tried to use Texas Two Step and it ultimately
| failed. And yes it did fail mostly because it was not
| being used in good faith.
| triceratops wrote:
| > And yes it did fail mostly because it was not being
| used in good faith
|
| As of today, judgments against J&J total to less than
| $10b. J&J committed up to $61.5b to LTL, the company it
| spun off. Simple arithmetic shows us all current
| judgments will be satisfied.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47222778
|
| The judge used this $61.5b commitment - which J&J made to
| ensure LTL would pay for all the lawsuits J&J lost - as
| proof that LTL wasn't actually bankrupt. Which is weird
| but also correct.
|
| Where is the bad faith today? I mean it's possible J&J
| has done some internal analysis and expects to be on the
| hook for more than that in the future. Or there's some
| other arcane legal issue I don't understand. And in that
| sense committing the $61.5b is a smart way of capping
| their losses while still looking like good guys today.
| There's no evidence of that right now though.
|
| To re-iterate, the bankruptcy was rejected because of how
| it was structured. Not because there was an attempt to
| dodge liability. To me that's a more damning indictment
| of the legal system because it implies liability dodging
| might have worked if it were structured right.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Nah, Matt Levine is an absolute Texas Two Step apologist,
| something that made me lose a lot of respect for him.
|
| He repeatedly contorts himself into pretzels trying to
| defend it (why?) and into equal pretzels avoiding
| exploring the two elephants in the rule:
|
| 1. He (and those involved) claim that the process is
| "actually, truly, intended to be solely for the benefit
| of the plaintiffs suing us", and that defendants are
| doing them a favor, going out of their way to spin off
| these entities that are flimsy houses of cards.
|
| 2. Is it just a coincidence that of the firms who've gone
| through the Texas Two Step process, that they've managed
| to get away with not having to pay _ninety per cent_ of
| court-ordered liabilities, and in at least one case,
| _ninety-eight per cent_?
|
| Why on earth would these companies _bend over backwards_
| to do something that they claim has zero benefit for
| them, and is only truly intended to help streamline and
| optimize plaintiff 's efforts in suing them?
|
| Why is it even called the Texas Two Step? Is it because:
|
| 1. it assists claimants and plaintiffs (their
| adversaries) to bond together and present one solid
| unified case against you, or...
|
| 2. because it assists them to _elegantly dance around
| their liabilities_?
|
| Levine and the firms and companies he's carrying water
| for insist the name has nothing to do with the second
| point.
|
| In the JJ case, Levine's apologism of "they weren't
| bankrupt enough, yet" is horseshit.
|
| JJCI was funded to the tune of $2B. _Slightly_ less than
| the $61.5B of liability, you 'll agree.
|
| After the bankruptcy was rejected, the Judge had said
| that the bankruptcy might be necessary at some point in
| the future, but "now wasn't the time".
|
| JJCI re-filed bankruptcy proceedings _three hours later_.
|
| All these apologists are taking the piss.
| triceratops wrote:
| > JJCI was funded to the tune of $2B. Slightly less than
| the $61.5B of liability, you'll agree
|
| Your numbers are all wrong.
|
| Here's a law firm's summary of all the judgments to date
| against J&J: https://www.sokolovelaw.com/product-
| liability/talcum-powder/...
|
| These don't add up anywhere close to $10b, let alone
| $61.5b.
|
| $61.5b is the amount that J&J ultimately agreed to pay
| the new company (LTL) that it spun off to take over the
| liabilities.
|
| This is from the court that rejected the bankruptcy:
|
| "we cannot agree LTL was in financial distress when it
| filed its Chapter 11 petition. The value and quality of
| its assets, which include a roughly $61.5 billion payment
| right against J&J and New Consumer, make this holding
| untenable."
|
| https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/222003p.pdf
|
| My translation: "This new company can get up to $61.5b
| from J&J but says it's in financial straits. Bankruptcy
| denied."
|
| I'm aware the Texas Two Step is used by companies to get
| out of paying what they legally owe. It's unclear to me
| if _this particular case_ is a good example of that today
| because J &J has committed to paying at least $61.5b and
| that's much more than the judgements against them.
|
| If in 20 years all the judgements end up being more like
| $80b and J&J says "Whoopsie, money's run out" then I
| guess we can call shenanigans.
|
| I don't know what Matt Levine has said about the Texas
| Two Step outside of this case.
|
| > JJCI re-filed bankruptcy proceedings three hours later
|
| What did they change in their application? What happened
| to the new filing?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > I'm aware the Texas Two Step is used by companies to
| get out of paying what they legally owe. It's unclear to
| me if this particular case is a good example of that
| today ...
|
| They are using the same law firm (Jones Day) as the
| others. It's a perfectly good example.
|
| > ... because J&J has committed to paying at least $61.5b
| and that's much more than the judgements against them.
|
| Actually, the $2B and $8.9B proposals in LTL's two
| bankruptcy proceedings made the funding from J&J
| contingent on claimants and future claimants accepting
| the bankruptcy, i.e. its J&J effectively trying to
| shoehorn this into an informal class action - plaintiffs
| can choose to form a class action, defendants are not
| able to force them into one, but this effectively would.
| So it seems unlikely that J&J would ever be on the hook
| for $61.5B. Indeed, HoldCo, the parent of LTL, in turn
| owned by J&J would only ever be funded to a maximum of
| $30B.
|
| > Here's a law firm's summary of all the judgments to
| date against J&J
|
| _to date_. There 's many many more (thirty-eight
| thousand) cases that have not been adjudicated, in fact.
|
| > because J&J has committed to paying at least $61.5b
|
| Where do you think that number came from? J&J playing
| good corporate samaritan, or knowing that they still have
| many, many more cases winding through the courts, or in
| discovery, than have had final judgments rendered so far?
|
| Good for J&J. They've actually only paid $2B - of the
| $10B of judgments that you yourself acknowledge. Good for
| J&J. And they've committed to funding $61.5B? How's that
| worked out for other companies doing this?
|
| Georgia Pacific, in the same spot, committed to an
| _initial funding_ of their T2S entity, and to review this
| further as needed. In the end, they funded it to the tune
| of $175M. And then told the court that the entity was
| entirely independent from GP and they had no obligation
| to do any such thing.
|
| St Gobain, in the same spot, committed to funding to the
| tune of $50B, and ended up putting in less than $100M and
| refusing anything further.
|
| So audacious was St Gobain that they were laid into by
| the court:
|
| > Gross testified that Saint-Gobain repeatedly
| misrepresented its intent in creating the subsidiary that
| eventually filed for bankruptcy, calling executives'
| testimony and other statements "misleading" and "not
| truthful." U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Craig Whitley followed
| Gross's testimony last August with factual findings that
| included his own blistering critique of the executives'
| statements as "contrary to the evidence," saying the
| company's story "strains credibility."
|
| Four major companies have tried the Texas Two Step
| lately. All of them have used the same one law firm,
| again, Jones Day. Three of them (J&J being the fourth)
| have managed to drastically under-deliver on their
| commitments and liabilities and have emerged unscathed as
| a result.
|
| Trane Technologies, same thing.
|
| Weird that LTL was formed in North Carolina, where this
| scheme seems to work, yet J&J has no corporate presence
| there (headquartered in NJ)
|
| But somehow, J&J, and Matt Levine would love us to
| believe that this time, somehow, it'll be different.
|
| > What did they change in their application?
|
| They changed the number from $2B to $8B and filed
| bankruptcy again. It was again dismissed. The first time,
| the courts as you said described it as an untenable
| position. Now, they were more annoyed, saying that the
| application was made in actively bad faith.
|
| "Johnson & Johnson would later make a third attempt at
| resolving talc litigation through bankruptcy in 2024,
| which also failed. The company continued to face
| thousands of lawsuits alleging its talc products were
| contaminated with asbestos and caused cancer.
|
| The repeated bankruptcy dismissals established important
| precedent limiting the ability of financially healthy
| corporations to use the Texas Two-Step strategy to avoid
| mass tort litigation."
|
| This is from another mesothelioma law firm (important to
| note that J&J has actually resolved many of the
| mesothelioma claims against it, ~95%. But the vast
| majority of claims are around asbestos, and have a much
| clearer causality, typically resulting in larger
| verdicts).
|
| April 2025, J&J, sorry, LTL, have since tried, and
| failed, to file a fourth bankruptcy. They're getting
| increasingly nervous that they won't be able to sidestep
| liability.
|
| There's also this hugely perverse incentive with all of
| these "commitment to fund"s:
|
| "You injured me and have been ordered to compensate me.
| But in order to do so I have to hope you continue to
| prosper, potentially injuring others along the way, so I
| get my compensation. I can choose between getting you
| shut down, but potentially not being compensated, or
| being compensated but knowing that you go on to be able
| to do this to others."
| triceratops wrote:
| Your post boils down to "funding commitments are
| worthless and unenforceable", which if true is
|
| 1. surprising to me, a layman. and
|
| 2. means it's just as well J&J's ploy didn't work.
|
| All the rest about J&J using the same law firm etc.
| doesn't make for much of a smoking gun for me.
|
| You're also right about the perverse incentives. But it
| would be equally unfair if the last 37k of those 38k
| plaintiffs didn't get any money because the first 1000 to
| win were awarded all of it.
|
| Tl;dr J&J may or may not be playing fair. Is there
| another orderly process to ensure all plaintiffs are
| treated fairly?
| rayiner wrote:
| Generally true, but one key point. Under bankruptcy law,
| you can give liabilities to a subsidiary, but you have to
| give the subsidiary enough money to pay the anticipated
| liabilities. That's the reason why J&J gave the
| subsidiary so much money. Otherwise, the bankruptcy would
| have been dismissed as a fraudulent transfer. The
| bankruptcy court approved the bankruptcy filing, but on
| appeal the Third Circuit dismissed the bankruptcy because
| the subsidiary wasn't bankrupt enough. Basically, in
| order to avoid fraudulent transfer law, J&J had to write
| the subsidiary a big check, but that money made the
| subsidiary ineligible for bankruptcy.
|
| (Disclosure: I was on the team that won the appeal
| against J&J on this issue. My comment above is about the
| public record.)
| triceratops wrote:
| > So the Texas Two-Step supports the idea that companies
| can't just put liabilities in a subsidiary and put it
| into bankruptcy. The Texas Two-Step is an effort to work
| around that rule.
|
| Sorry I'm having trouble parsing this because the first
| and second sentences seem to contradict each other. Or
| I'm just bad at reading.
|
| > Disclosure: I was on the team that won the appeal
| against J&J on this issue
|
| That's actually pretty cool. If I may ask, given that LTL
| was funded with many multiples of its liabilities, why
| was the bankruptcy appealed?
| rayiner wrote:
| > Sorry I'm having trouble parsing this because the first
| and second sentences seem to contradict each other. Or
| I'm just bad at reading.
|
| Sorry, I was unclear. You have a law that says that pre-
| bankruptcy transfers that were made to avoid liability
| can be voided: 11 USC 548:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/11/548. So say
| J&J put the liabilities into a subsidiary, but didn't
| give it a check. The creditors would have been able to
| void the transfer of liability and give it back to J&J by
| proving that J&J transferred the liabilities that the
| subsidiary couldn't pay.
|
| To work around that, J&J did a particular formulation of
| the Texas Two-Step where it gave the subsidiary a big
| check to pay for the anticipated liabilities. The fact
| that J&J had to do that shows that the fraudulent
| transfer law does have some teeth. It was the reason J&J
| had to take the approach that ultimately got the
| subsidiary kicked out of bankruptcy court.
|
| > If I may ask, given that LTL was funded with many
| multiples of its liabilities, why was the bankruptcy
| appealed
|
| So the amicus brief from Public Justice--which I had no
| involvement with--does a good job of explaining the
| public interest concerns: https://www.tzlegal.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/07/2022.07.0.... Bankruptcy court is
| a debtor-friendly forum and gives debtors tremendous
| leverage over creditors.
| triceratops wrote:
| > The bankruptcy court didn't agree that having too much
| money was a grounds for dismissing the bankruptcy filing.
| The appellate court reversed, finding that a company that
| had too much money was legally precluded from filing for
| bankruptcy.
|
| I understood that. My question was why challenge the
| bankruptcy if there was apparently already enough money
| for everyone who won? Why not just go to bankruptcy court
| and pick up your check?
|
| EDIT: Looks like this question was answered with an edit
| to the post I replied. Thanks!
|
| Another commenter
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47224462 said that
|
| 1. funding commitments have been unenforceable in other
| Texas two step bankruptcies
|
| 2. allowing a bankruptcy court to figure out payments
| would turn all the thousands of plaintiffs' cases into a
| defacto class action (my understanding of what this
| person wrote).
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Yup. It's "weird" that all of these companies claim that
| "swear to god, we fully intend to honor our obligations",
| then all of them use this one law firm who specializes in
| doing exactly the opposite and "oops, look what happened,
| we have no more legal obligation, that belongs now to this
| other entity that we said we'd fund but ... somehow ...
| didn't. Or certainly not anywhere near where we said we
| would."
|
| But there are definitely apologists and deniers of it, even
| right here on HN. Or "you don't know that's what's going to
| happen, we owe it to them to wait and see", even as you
| watch the exact same law firm guide another company through
| the exact same process in the exact same way, but somehow,
| maybe, this time, it'll have a different outcome.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's only illegal if they don't get away with it. Most get
| away with it in corporate America. If bad actors are going to
| push the bounds of the legal framework, good actors should as
| well when the rules don't matter. Rule of "Fuck you make me."
| To improve odds of success, one could operate from a position
| of being judgement proof, organizing corporate and legal
| entities accordingly from a charging perspective. Laws are
| not objective, it's all interpretative dance. Know how to
| dance for the performance you choose to participate in.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The proper way to do it would be to let Greenpeace USA go
| insolvent and then immediately form GreenPeace America as a new
| entity unhindered by the liabilities of the old one.
|
| This tactic has been used by our current President.
| jmyeet wrote:
| 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.
| tokai wrote:
| US truely is a banana republic.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| > 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.
|
| If you're interested in this story, I would encourage you to
| read the full contents of the ruling in this US case.
| (https://theamazonpost.com/wp-content/uploads/Chevron-
| Ecuador...) It's long but relatively easy reading, and it
| contains a _lot_ more evidence against Donziger 's side of the
| story than a video of a social gathering. In particular, it
| seems absolutely unambiguous to me that his team blackmailed
| one of the Ecuadorian judges into giving him favorable rulings,
| implementing the theory repeatedly found in his personal
| notebooks that "the only way the court will respect us is if
| they fear us".
| stackedinserter wrote:
| I'll call you a pdf, put banners on every utility pole where
| you live, and even set your bicycle on fire. Will it count as I
| just "hurt your feelings"?
| ttiurani wrote:
| 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...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| As an outsider, why is this a credible institution over the
| jury and judge?
| docdeek wrote:
| I can't speak to the institution but the only public
| statements on their website relate to this particular trial.
| It could be this is the first ever trial they have monitored
| in this way; it might also be a group that will only ever
| monitor this one trial.
| amarant wrote:
| In other words Greenpeace is trying to muddy the waters and
| hide their guilt by painting themselves as the victims of
| injustice?
|
| How very original..
| some_random wrote:
| Yeah we're dealing with a mud fight between two highly
| resourced adversaries who are practiced in bullshit
| underhanded tactics and influence operations.
| indubioprorubik wrote:
| Nah, its one source of funding. The oil giants pump there
| money in bonkers oppossition- one Greta Thunberg glueing
| herself to a public street does more damage to that cause
| then the whole of counter propaganda ever could. And it
| prevents the debate about resonable measures like free
| public transport.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I guess I was expecting a Matt Levine-style breakdown of
| why the trial was run improperly and why an appellate court
| would be expected to strike it down. Instead we have vague
| statements that could have come from an elected's staff.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| related topic -- "Judge shopping" refers to the practice of
| litigants strategically filing lawsuits in court districts or
| divisions where they are likely to be assigned to a judge
| sympathetic to their cause, often exploiting structural
| quirks in the judiciary
| dmix wrote:
| Most state courts randomly assign you a judge so it's not
| that simple, in some cases you can target certain districts
| in certain states where there are less judges (like the
| Texas patent judge). This is a trial in North Dakota
| because that's where the protests happened. I doubt they
| had many options in a single jurisdiction. The fallback for
| this stuff is of course a circuit court appeal.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Care to explain how a circuit court might come to hear an
| appeal out of a state court of general jurisdiction?
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Well, let's not get into this left-right thing because that
| could go back and forth forever. Especially in the current
| environment.
|
| eg - "As an outsider, why is [the jury and judge] a credible
| institution over the monitors?"
|
| We should all just give the legal experts time to look over
| the records of what happened, and assess why. From there, a
| consensus will likely emerge as to what happened during and
| before the trial. And the justice or injustice of the matter
| will present itself.
|
| But you can't have a judge say one thing and some other
| single expert say another, and from those pieces of
| information decide anything of an authoritative nature. Our
| institutions just don't have that type of credibility any
| longer. This is the consequence of credibility crises for any
| society's steward classes.
|
| It was a long slide getting here, decades actually. But I
| think we are firmly now at the point of the "credibility
| collapse" portion of the "credibility crisis".
| quotz wrote:
| Because sometimes corruption happens.
| some_random wrote:
| They're a bunch of lifetime activists who spun up an
| authoritative sounding NGO that has done literally nothing
| else, but yeah muh corruption.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Oil companies have been suppressing climate change
| research for decades to keep cooking the earth for
| profits. Is that not corruption? I suppose if you are
| economically exposed to these gains, don't believe in
| climate change, and/or won't be here for the bad times
| from this, the facts may not matter to your mental model.
| The facts remain that climate change is real and oil
| companies are doing their best to extract every bit of
| profit they can until we're off of oil, regardless of the
| negative trajectories and outcomes from this.
|
| https://www.ucs.org/resources/decades-deceit
| some_random wrote:
| Oil companies have done worse than that, but we're not
| talking about them right now we're talking about Trial
| Monitors Dot Org, the real authoritative source on this
| trial that has done literally nothing else.
| switchbak wrote:
| You know, it's possible for these oil companies to have
| done all this bad stuff, and for Greenpeace to be a
| pretty shitty organization. And for the person to have a
| different mindset than all the strawman assumptions you
| just made.
| nickpsecurity wrote:
| Whereas, for decades, people made millions to tens of
| billions (esp Blackrock/ESG) on climate alarmism and
| their "solutions" to their claims of man-made, climate
| change. They and their supporters funded many of the
| studies supporting man-made climate change. I was not
| told this at all by liberal or academic sources promoting
| man-made, climate change with specific solutions.
|
| https://youtu.be/DOWTDDy6wlg?si=hZsk4likxTi9nC-E
|
| They did tell me that we should oppose gas and "climate
| denial" because oil companies funded some studies backing
| their position. If they funded them, or if any author was
| ideologically biased, we're to dismiss everything in them
| as dogma or manipulation. Why don't climate alarmists
| apply the same rules, "follow the money" and "counter
| institutional bias," to their own beliefs and studies?
|
| Could it be this is more dogmatism and economics than
| scientific and selfless consensus? If so, shouod we
| reject it by default until the stuff was all checked by
| provably-neutral sources with no incentives favoring
| eithet answer? (Spoiler: Yes!)
| jcranmer wrote:
| Oil companies have a definite history of punching people
| and then suing them for running into their fist. But I
| should also point out that Greenpeace is the kind of
| shitty activist company that _also_ does those kind of
| tactics, so an oil company suing Greenpeace leaves my
| priors as "I don't know which side is more likely right
| in this scenario."
| Maarten88 wrote:
| > I don't know which side is more likely right in this
| scenario.
|
| What are the motives? Follow the money? Who profits most
| might give an indication of who is more likely wrong.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Oil companies haven't done a damn thing. We are the cause
| of global warming. Every time we pump gas into our car,
| buy anything that came from far away, or use any
| technology dependent on oil. Blaming oil companies is
| childish garbage people do to avoid recognizing their
| personal share of the responsibility.
| Maarten88 wrote:
| You know the carbon footprint concept was literally
| created by BP marketing, to place the blame for climate
| change on society, and distract from all the evil stuff
| they did to promote more fossil fuel consumption and
| sabotage climate science.
|
| The Climate Town channel on Youtube has lots of video's
| on this, such as this one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J9LOqiXdpE
| terminalshort wrote:
| The blame is 100% on society, so BP is correct to place
| it there. If we wanted to reduce our CO2 output to near
| zero we could do that easily. But it turns out that we
| would rather have all of our modern conveniences, so this
| is 100% our fault. Blaming it on oil companies is like a
| murderer blaming Smith and Wesson.
| msy wrote:
| Blaming oil companies for the extremely well documented
| history of suppression of research and action into the
| impact of climate change is not childish.
| terminalshort wrote:
| It is childish to think that anything would have been
| different if this research was released.
| msy wrote:
| Exactly. I mean look what happened when we worked out
| CFCs were destroying the ozone layer through rigorous
| scientific research and public disclosure.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| You are literally avoiding the topic (Greenpeace
| intentionally created a misleading authoritative-looking
| entity) to say "Oil bad! Boo oil companies!".
|
| The facts remain that Greenpeace did in fact attempt to
| slander (legal definition) the big oil corp.
|
| Maybe you support "win at all costs" in this fight, but
| don't pretend one side is pure and honest.
| harimau777 wrote:
| In America, just about anything is more cridble than our
| "justice" system.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| Based on their "Meet the Committee" page, they look a bit
| more like they have a dog in this fight beyond simply
| adjudicating the case.
|
| https://www.trialmonitors.org/meet-the-committee
|
| Plenty of accomplished people there, but as a group "unbiased
| observers" isn't the first phrase that comes to mind.
| some_random wrote:
| Why should I care what they think? Seriously, I'm so tired of
| seeing XYZ totally real and credentialed expert non government
| organization pop up in weird appeals to authority. They
| couldn't even be bothered to monitor any other trials for this
| one, this looks to be the only thing they've ever done.
| bombcar wrote:
| My non-profit Analyzing the HN Posts (just created today) has
| verified that this is 100% real.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Greenpeace should just do a Texas Two Step. Works for heavy
| industry.
| renewiltord wrote:
| And a statement from legal experts monitoring this group
| https://pastebin.com/EEsEXbcz
|
| Apparently, according to this source, trial monitors.org is a
| fake organization. There is some evidence that this is a
| credible accusation.
| calibas wrote:
| If I boycott a company, am I legally responsible for any lost
| profit that happens as a result?
| lkbm wrote:
| Of course not, but that's completely unrelated to what's
| happening here.
| arduanika wrote:
| Depends. Did you incite crimes?
| some_random wrote:
| No, but if you get your friends to torch their warehouse you
| are
| some_random wrote:
| So they almost certainly are guilty, but the damages seem
| exorbitant
| grogenaut wrote:
| Depends. What's the overhead of delaying construction,
| replacing pipes and valves etc. lost revenue ( like car
| rental)?
| zug_zug wrote:
| Hard to believe you're downvoted in an organic way...
| johntb86 wrote:
| 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.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I find it hard to believe these people did 345 million in damage.
| Schmerika wrote:
| 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.
| terminalshort wrote:
| > maybe telling some protesters to engage in direct action
| against a company leaking oil into their water supply
|
| Sounds like you put the maybe in the wrong place. The jury
| found that they did do that. And you have no evidence
| whatsoever that they leaked any oil into the water supply.
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