Greenpeace International v. Gion

The North Dakota Supreme Court denied the Greenpeace defendants’ petition for a supervisory writ directing the district court to change the venue of the trial from Morton County—where the Greenpeace defendants said residents’ everyday lives were “significantly disrupted” by the protests at Standing Rock—to another county. The Greenpeace defendants argued that jury questionnaires, voir dire, and a 2022 survey of potential jurors, as well as “pretrial publicity [that] fanned the flames of potential jurors’ fear and anger,” showed that the empaneled jurors were not actually impartial and that Morton County was a “fundamentally unfair venue.” The Greenpeace defendants contended that the venue was “potentially ruinous” because in the event “this biased panel” found them liable for the $900 million sought by the developers, the supersedeas bond needed to secure a stay of a judgment “would effectively destroy” the defendants.