A recent opinion piece in Newsweek misrepresents the current status of our litigation against Greenpeace in U.S. court. The case before the United State District Court for the Northern District of California was not “dismissed” as the Newsweek author claims.
In fact, Judge Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California recognized the merit of some of our claims against Greenpeace and their allies. Although the Judge did not allow all of Resolute’s claims to proceed, the case is still moving forward on defamation and unfair competition claims against Greenpeace. A number of Greenpeace entities, including Greenpeace International as well as named individual Greenpeace associates, remain named parties.
We submitted a request to the publication to correct this error. Instead, Newsweek made only a superficial clarification — and entirely ignored our request to include a simple hyperlink to our website so that readers could find our perspective.*
As a principled and ethical organization, and a recognized global sustainability leader, Resolute believes it has a duty to confront false claims and misinformation about our company and our stewardship of the forests. Greenpeace and their allies have dismissed the lawsuits against them as “intimidation tactics,” when in fact they are named in our litigation due to the irresponsible and radical tactics they have embraced.
For years, Greenpeace has promoted misleading accusations about Resolute, threatened our customers, and harmed boreal communities. Time and again, we attempted to resolve these misleading activist campaigns through open discussion, to no avail. Finally, we took our case to court, where a judge and jury can decide on the legitimacy of their conduct.
After years of claiming baselessly that Resolute “destroyed forests,” we finally forced them to back up their claims, and they changed their tune. Greenpeace admitted in court filings that these accusations were “figurative rather than literal,” “rhetorical hyperbole” and “non-verifiable statements of subjective opinion” that should be protected by free speech laws. But free speech does not protect libel and slander.
In conjunction with our legal action, we plan to maintain our effort to publicly hold Greenpeace and their allies accountable for the economic harm they have caused not only to our company, but to the thousands of people who live and work in the boreal forest. Greenpeace and their cohorts continue to ignore pleas from boreal stakeholders who have asked them to stop spreading misinformation about Canada’s world-class and strictly enforced forest management practices.
Cases against Greenpeace in the U.S. and Canada are now proceeding with discovery. As these cases progress, we are confident that Greenpeace and their cohorts will be held accountable.
*UPDATE: Newsweek has since updated the article to correct the error and added a link to our site.