Water Protectors leave the Standing Rock camp on a "Toxic Tour" of Dakota Access Pipeline Sites, 3rd October 2016 . Photo: Unicorn Riot Media

February 14th 2019: the ETP lawsuit has been dismissed in full. See the judge's decision here.

July 24th 2018: the ETP lawsuit against BankTrack has been dismissed. See the judge's decision here.

August 2017 BankTrack, Earth First! and Greenpeace have been served a lawsuit by Energy Transfer Equity and Energy Transfer Partners (ETE/ETP), the  companies behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. The lawsuit, announced in August 2017 and served to BankTrack on 3rd September, alleges that the "group of co-conspirators manufactured and disseminated materially false and misleading information about Energy Transfer and the Dakota Access Pipeline ("DAPL") and "incited, funded, and facilitated crimes and acts of terrorism to further these objectives." On 29 November 2017 BankTrack filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

This page gathers tohether documents and links relating to the lawsuit. See the tabs on the right for links to news stories, documents and media relating to the case. The key documents include:

• BankTrack's profile on the Dakota Access Pipeline;
• The full lawsuit, filed in August 2017;
• ETE/ETP's press release announcing the lawsuit;
• BankTrack's initial response to the lawsuit;
• BankTrack's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, filed November 2017;
• ETP's response to the motion to dismiss, filed February 2018.

We will update this page regularly to inform the public on proceedings.

Help us meet legal costs

We do not yet know what level of expense will be involved in fighting this legal case, but it will certainly cost us considerable time and effort, alongside as-yet-unknown levels of legal fees. If you wish to support BankTrack, please see our donations page. Thank you.

Help us document this case

Regardless of the eventual outcome  we consider the lawsuit an important event that will determine the way civil society groups will be able to operate in the future. As such, we think it is worth documenting the proceedings, for example through a film documentary or a thesis. If you are a film maker or a law student that wants to take up this lawsuit as a topic for a documentary or thesis, (paid for by your own funds as we do not have funding available) please get in touch with Johan Frijns, director of BankTrack. 

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