The demand for $ 300 million of Texas Ppeline Company against Greenpeace is aimed at trial in Dakota del Norte

For hard Jack

Mandan, ND (AP) – The demand of a Texas pipeline that seeks potentially hundreds of millions Greenpeace dollars would advance with opening statements on Wednesday in a trial, the environmental organization calls an effort to Critical silence of the oil industry.

The jury selection took place earlier for the week and the estimated five -week trial Now he will start in Mandan, North Dakota.

The demand is based of protests in 2016 and 2017 against him Access to Dakota Oil and its controversial Missouri river crossing River above the reserve of the Sioux tribe of the rock. The tribe has long opposed the pipe as a risk to its water supply. The pipe It was completed In 2017.

Energy Transfer, based in Dallas, and his subsidiary Dakota Access allege transfer, discomfort, defamation and other crimes of Greenpeace International, based in the Netherlands and his American branch, Greenpeace USA. The demand also appoints the group’s financing arm, Greenpeace Fund Inc.

The demand alleges that Greenpeace tried to delay the construction of the pipeline, defamated the companies behind it and coordinated the transfer, vandalism and violence by the protesters of the pipe.

Archive: Manifesters against the Congregation of Oil Pipeline of Dakota Access, November 21, 2016, on a bridge closed on a state highway near Cannon Ball., ND near its camp in southern North Dakota. (Photo AP/James Macpherson, Archive)

Greenpeace defendants deny the accusations.

Greenpeace says that the demand goes after $ 300 million, citing a figure of a previous federal case. The complaint of the lawsuit requests damage to an amount to prove in the trial.

Greenpeace representatives say that the case is an example of corporations that abuse the legal system to persecute critics and is a critical evidence of freedom of expression and protest rights.

“We are trying to bring visibility around a fight that will have important implications for the future of the first amendment because those who bring this type of demands, want these fights to remain silent and invisible,” said the senior legal advisor Deepa Padmanabha.

The demand is that Greenpeace does not follow the law, not on freedom of expression, the spokesman for energy transfer, Vicki Granado, said previously.

“We support the rights of all Americans to express their opinions and legally protest. However, when it is not done according to our laws, we have a legal system to deal with that, ”he said.

The company presented a similar case in the Federal Court in 2017, which A dismissed judge In 2019. The energy transfer subsequently filed the lawsuit now at the trial in the State Court.

Originally published: February 26, 2025 at 10:09 am PST