TotalEnergies’ proceedings against Greenpeace canceled

French justice canceled this Thursday the legal proceedings launched by the oil group TotalEnergies against the Greenpeace association, which accused it of underestimating its carbon footprint in a report in 2022. “As the oil and gas major celebrates its 100th anniversary today Today, justice ruled in favor of Greenpeace, judging the summons too imprecise for [lui] allow […] to defend itself usefully on the merits,” declared the NGO in a press release. TotalEnergies said it was taking “note of the judge’s decision” of the Paris judicial court and examining “the follow-up to be given”.

In April 2023, the oil major sued the NGO for “dissemination of misleading information” to the stock markets after the publication at the end of 2022 of a Greenpeace report carried out with an analysis firm, Factor-X. In this report, Greenpeace estimated that TotalEnergies’ true greenhouse gas emissions were four times higher than what the multinational announces, thus opening the way to a debate on the complex and discussed carbon accounting methods.

“Gag procedure”

During a hearing on February 29 devoted to procedural questions, the association pleaded for the nullity of this summons, on the grounds that it was imprecise in its terms and that it constituted a “SLAPP procedure” intended to hinder his freedom of expression by relying on stock market law rather than taking the usual route of defamation proceedings. TotalEnergies then criticized Greenpeace for wanting to cut short this legal action to “escape the debate on the merits”.

In his order, the judge considered that “the lack of details necessarily causes harm” to the parties assigned, “who, not having a precise and exhaustive list of allegedly false or misleading information” put forward by TotalEnergies, “do not can usefully defend themselves on the merits. The judge did not, however, recognize TotalEnergies’ legal action as an “abusive procedure”.

“In a purely procedural phase”, the judge “considered that the action initiated by TotalEnergies and Factor-X was not abusive without being admissible as it stands since the terms of the summons would not be sufficiently precise », Commented the group. He was ordered to pay Greenpeace and Factor-X the sum of 15,000 euros in legal costs. He has 15 days to appeal from the notification of the decision.