A striking verdict against Greenpeace, finding it liable for more than $600 million in damages for supporting the Standing Rock protests, will chill free expression and launch a new era for speech lawsuits, First Amendment lawyers say.
There’s “blood in the water,” said Thomas Julin, a First Amendment attorney for the firm Gunster, who has spent his career mostly defending companies’ speech rights.
One of the largest fossil fuel pipeline companies in the United States, Energy Transfer, won its lawsuit against Greenpeace yesterday, after accusing the organization of materially supporting the 2016 Standing Rock protests against the pipeline Energy Transfer was trying to build in North Dakota.