On March 9th 1995, The Norwegian stipendiary magistrates court, Dalane Herredsrett, sentenced Greenpeace to pay £17,000 in damages to whaling vessel skipper Arvid Enghaugen for obstructing his boat in the execution of its work during the 1994 whaling season, by, amongst other things, boarding the vessel and by cutting loose a dying whale. Greenpeace was also ordered to pay Enghaugen’s legal expenses amounting to £11,000, in addition to their own expenses. The Greenpeace campaign went on almost continuously for a period of three weeks. Enghaugen was finally able to fulfil his allocated quota, but the Greenpeace campaign had forced him to spend several weeks longer in doing so.

No responsibility
Enghaugen sued the four companies he recognised from the operations in the North Sea this summer , where the two Greenpeace ships Sirius and Solo were involved. These companies were Stitching Greenpeace Netherlands, Stitching Marine Services, Stitching Oxygen and Stitching Sirius. The last three of these companies own or operate the Greenpeace ships. The four companies’ solicitor claimed that they could not be held responsible for the actions against the Senet in the North Sea, neither individually nor collectively, and that none of them had had the instructive authority for the operation. Nor could the circumstance that they (the companies being sued) are members of the informal environmental movement Greenpeace imply any collective responsibility, it says in the defence litigation document. Furthermore, it says that there is no evidence of any formal decision to take action and that none of the accused had any knowledge of, nor control over, how the operation should be carried out. They admit that the campaign leader was Geert Drimann, director of Stitching Greenpeace Netherlands, but claim that he held this position as a private individual , not by way of his job in Greenpeace. They claim that the leaders of the campaign had independent responsibility for the operation, and that they represented neither the accused parties, nor any other organisations.

Difficult to Penetrate
Such an attempt at disclaiming responsibility had been successful in a case tried by Nord Troms stipendiary magistrates court in January 1994, where Greenpeace activists who had acted against an oil rig were sentenced individually but where the Stitching Greenpeace Council was acquitted. Drilling for oil had to be stopped on safety grounds as a result of the campaign.

The basis for the acquittal was that the court was not able to identify which organisation was responsible for the campaign, and the relationship between the Greenpeace Council and the other organisations involved was diffuse. It is quite possible that one has chosen a complicated corporate structure in order to make it difficult for other s to penetrate the reality of corporate litigation surrounding the environmental movement, the court noted in the grounds for judgement.

This time such a strategy did not work. During the proceedings themselves ,agreement was reached that Stitching Marine Services that own and operate the Greenpeace vessels, should accept responsibility on behalf of the four accused companies. Not until now, during the main hearing, does Greenpeace accept that someone, as an organisation, is responsible for what has been done ... it says in the grounds for judgement.