Greenpeace court filing admission to lying, forest company charges
TORONTO — A forestry multinational that is suing Greenpeace under American racketeering laws alleges that the activist organization’s recent court filings are essentially an admission that it lies, a claim the group forcefully denies.
The new public relations offensive by Montrealbased Resolute Forest Products focuses on freespeech arguments Greenpeace has advanced as it seeks to have a $300-million lawsuit tossed without a hearing on its merits.
“This is the most significant development in the four-plus years of this saga,” Resolute vicepresident Seth Kursman told the Canadian Press. “Greenpeace has admitted that they were lying about our forestry practices. Their campaign has been peddling falsehoods.”
In its fight to stop the company’s lawsuit in Georgia, Greenpeace argues in a recent court filing that its criticism of Resolute’s logging practices in Canada’s boreal forests should be viewed through the prism of free speech rather than taken literally.
RFP has deliberately ignored the context and tried to take the criticism as “absolute” statements of scientific fact rather than as advocacy, Greenpeace argues. “Speakers who engage in protected expression on matters of public controversy — like Greenpeace here — often use forceful language to make their point,” Greenpeace states. “They do not hew to strict literalisms or scientific precision, but regularly use words ‘in a loose, figurative sense’ to express ‘strong disagreement’ and attack their intellectual opponents through ‘rhetorical hyperbole.’ ”
Tom Wetterer, Greenpeace general counsel in the U.S., said from Oregon on Monday that Resolute’s “lying” claim was “absolutely not true.”
In a years-long campaign, Greenpeace publicly accused Resolute of unsustainable logging in northern Ontario and Quebec that threatens endangered and other wildlife, contributes to climate change and ignores indigenous peoples.
The company, which is also suing Greenpeace for $7 million for defamation in Ontario, filed its Georgia lawsuit under racketeering laws enacted to deal with organized crime that allow for triple damages. Among other things, Resolute alleges Greenpeace is a “global fraud” whose campaigns are based on “sensational misinformation” aimed at getting people to donate money for its own benefit.
Kursman called Greenpeace’s tactics part of a “cycle of abuse” that relies on a lack of scientific grounding while making claims as a way to solicit donations. “Greenpeace has drifted away from legitimate environmental work to schemes for generating donations,” Kursman said. “Real people lost their jobs, communities have suffered, real families have experienced hardship ... a stark reminder of the damage that this ‘rhetorical hyperbole’ has caused.”