A North Dakota jury ordered Greenpeace to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for defamation over pipeline protests from nearly a decade ago. The organization intends to file an appeal at a later date.

Energy Transfer Partners sued Greenpeace for defamation and orchestrating criminal behavior by protesters at the Dakota Access pipeline. The suit claimed the organization “incited” people to protest by using a “misinformation campaign” in 2016 and 2017.

The environmental group denied the claims.

“They had a protest camp there. They had burned excavators,” said chief reporter Sheila Gunn Reid. “It was like What happened in northern BC where the axe-wielding mob rolled into the work site. That was like that every single day and it went on for two years.”

Meanwhile, legal counsel representing Greenpeace called the suit an erosion of free speech.

A Mandan, North Dakota jury ultimately awarded the multi-billion dollar company $660 million USD after ruling against Greenpeace, who feared the sum could bankrupt their U.S. operation.

“The pipeline was damaged, the project was delayed,” said Gunn Reid. “It was an absolute nightmare and chaos. Foreign-funded radicals or domestically-funded radicals, since this was in the United States, were coming from all over the country.”