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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

Or maybe, just maybe, they actually did unreasonably damage the pipeline company's reputation, in a way that is outside the legally-recognized bounds of free speech. Maybe justice actually was done.

(Note well: I haven't been following this case closely enough to say. But you should at least consider that as a possibility.)

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Does your theory pass the sniff test? How reasonable is it to believe that Greenpeace's "defamation" cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars? Why is $345 the correct three-digit number of millions for the reputation damage Greenpeace caused?

this is only possible if you can somehow square a pipeline company's activities as intersecting with the arc of justice. as it stands, they're actively hastening the degradation of land, water, wildlife, human life and surrounding climates everywhere they operate.

Regardless of what you think of pipelines, under the current system they have the protection of the law. Courts are judging based on what the law says, not on the sense of "justice" that you seem to be operating on. As you yourself said, they may not intersect.

kind of an insulting position to assume i (or anyone else you might be educating) don't know that courts ostensibly rule on law/precedent.

i'm specifically responding to your use of the word "justice" and how those two do not always align - it's a lack of precise definition, or a disagreement in terms. this is one of the clearest examples of that phenomenon that exists, especially when you consider the lengths the fossil fuel industry has gone to hide and misdirect evidence of the negative environmental impacts of their business model.

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