TORONTO – Today, the U.S. District Court for Northern California dismissed a lawsuit against Greenpeace USA and others brought by Canada-based Resolute Forest Products. 

This monumental victory comes almost ten years after logging giant Resolute launched a series of lawsuits to silence Greenpeace Canada, Greenpeace USA, individual activists and its own independent auditors over concerns with its operations in the boreal forest and its impact on dwindling woodland caribou herds. Although the dismissal of the legal case in the United States today is a big win, this decade-long legal battle continues against Greenpeace Canada in the Ontario courts. 

The goal of these so-called SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) is to silence public advocacy groups and tie them up in the courts instead of solving the company’s impact on the environment.

Resolute has recently been acquired by Paper Excellence, now the largest logging company in Canada and closely tied to the Sinar Mas / Asia Pulp & Paper empire, which has a track record of global deforestation, biodiversity loss and social conflicts. These connections were exposed in a groundbreaking 2022 Greenpeace Canada investigation and further documented in reporting by a number of Canadian journalists released this year. 

Priyanka Vittal, Legal Counsel with Greenpeace Canada, said:

“Resolute’s lawsuits show the extreme lengths some companies are willing to go to in order to profit from biodiversity loss and the destruction of the natural world. 

But today’s court ruling shows their scare tactics won’t work. Forests across Canada are in crisis, with soaring emissions from industrial logging, loss of wildlife and historic protests to protect them. It’s time for Resolute’s new owners – Paper Excellence – to end these pointless lawsuits and start cleaning up their operations.” 

ENDS 

Note to editors: To read the official documents, see the motion and the court decision.

For more information, please contact: 

Dina Ni, Communications Officer, Greenpeace Canada, 

[email protected], +1 (416) 820-2148