Saving Seafood

Jury finds Greenpeace liable for hundreds of millions in relation to pipeline protest

March 19, 2025 — A North Dakota jury on Wednesday found Greenpeace liable for millions of dollars in damages to a giant pipeline company in relation to protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline nearly a decade ago.

Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners sued Greenpeace for $300 million in 2019, accusing the environmental group of masterminding the protests, spreading misinformation and causing the company financial loss through damaged property and lost revenues.

After a three-week trial, the 9-person jury took two days to return their verdict.

The result is a huge blow to the 50-year-old environmental organization, which previously said that the case could bankrupt its US operations, and experts say it could have chilling implications for free speech.

“I think this is one of the worst First Amendment decisions in American history,” said Marty Garbus, a civil rights lawyer who has been monitoring the trial. “The decision is beyond comprehension.”

Other experts have criticized the lawsuit as an egregious SLAPP lawsuit — a strategic lawsuit against public participation that seeks to silence critics by burying them in exorbitant legal costs.

“The verdict is a loss for Greenpeace, but more so for the First Amendment right to speak out, and thus for all Americans,” said James Wheaton, founder and senior counsel for the First Amendment Project. “If huge corporations can do this to one they can do it to everyone.”

Read the full article at CNN

Paddlefish caviar, the next big thing?

June 3, 2018 — Everybody has a food thing, right? Everybody has that one item that you wouldn’t eat unless you were stranded on a deserted island or someone had a shotgun pressed securely to your lumbar region. Or both. And maybe not even then.

For us, it’s eggs. Oeuf, there it is.

No fried eggs. No omelets. No scrambles. No frittatas. Soft boiled, hard boiled, you can keep them. We’d rather stay dirty than submit to an egg wash. We can’t even watch other people eat eggs, especially when they start jamming their toast into the yokes and creating all sorts of Jackson Pollard-looking stuff on their plates. Our little phobia probably goes a long way toward explaining why we tend to be solitary breakfasters.

Needless to say, we’re not exactly down with caviar (thank God we’re poor). But we have to admit we were intrigued by a New York Times story out of Montana about a program to harvest the roe of giant freshwater paddlefish — which can run anywhere from 50 to 100 pounds — and sell it as caviar.

“It winds up on cruise ships, it winds up in restaurants, it winds up everywhere,” Dennis Scarnecchia, a fisheries professor at the University of Idaho, told the Times.

Scarnecchia (any relation to Pats line coach Dante, we wonder?) oversees paddlefish caviar programs in Montana, North Dakota and Oklahoma, from whence profits are funneled into research and monitoring of the massive fish.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times