Imagine if every final judgment of a court in the United States could be undone simply by appeal to be a more friendly court in a foreign nation. Thankfully, the legal order in the civilized world has evolved to prevent this kind of litigation adventurism.
Yet, Greenpeace is asking a Dutch court to upend that legal order. On April 16, the District Court of Amsterdam held a hearing before a three-judge panel in the case Greenpeace International v. Energy Transfer, where it can refuse Greenpeace’s request to flout the international law surrounding courts respecting courts. A decision in that case is expected in early June.
Recommended Stories
Here’s the background. In 2025, a North Dakota jury found Greenpeace at fault for damages inflicted on the American energy company Energy Transfer and ordered the organization to pay $660 million in damages. A judge in February reduced that amount to $345 million but also very directly ordered Greenpeace to pay it.
SUPREME COURT ALLOWS TEXAS’S PRO-GOP REDISTRICTING TO STAND
Seeing the writing on the wall while that litigation was pending, Greenpeace began its attempt to find a way to circumvent the American court. It filed a collateral lawsuit in the District Court of Amsterdam, Netherlands, alleging that Energy Transfer violated a new EU directive designed to curtail strategic lawsuits against public participation.
The Greenpeace action in the EU is asking a Dutch court to order Energy Transfer to pay Greenpeace a sum equivalent to all the damages and costs it incurred from the North Dakota lawsuit, effectively asking it to void the North Dakota judgment and announce Greenpeace as the winner even after the American court, after full deliberation and in a final judgment, declared it a loser.
The 2025 North Dakota court judgment clearly recognized that Greenpeace’s actions were illegal, going far beyond valid, peaceful public participation in public affairs that would even be covered by the EU directive. During the three-week trial, jurors heard evidence of how Greenpeace engaged in a campaign of misinformation about Energy Transfer and its pipeline project, trespassed on its land, vandalized its equipment, and deliberately blocked construction crews from working.
We are now beyond fact finding, and the Dutch court must now only consider whether another court has already resolved this dispute to final judgment. The April 16 hearing gives the Dutch court a chance to set things straight. And it can rely on very clear precedents and legal standards to do so.
First, once a matter is finally decided by one court, the matter is closed in that court and all others. Another court — even in a foreign jurisdiction — cannot “reopen” and give a second bite at the apple to the loser in the dispute. The loser can pursue appeals, but they cannot start over in a different trial court altogether, hoping for a better result.
This limitation flows from a doctrine known as res judicata, a foundational element of the common and civil legal systems utilized in Europe and North America. Once the North Dakota case reached final judgment before the case in the Netherlands, the issues resolved in the North Dakota case became binding on the North Dakota court as a matter of res judicata.
If these issues could be revisited, every judgment would be meaningless. Courts exist to provide trusted answers litigants can rely on and move forward.
As reflected in the Restatement (Second) of the Law of Conflicts Section 98, “A valid judgment rendered in a foreign nation after a fair trial in a contested proceeding will be recognized in the United States.” Similarly, the U.S. should be able to expect reciprocal treatment from courts in foreign nations, as a matter of comity. Indeed, the legal order of the civilized world depends on such reciprocal recognition of judgments.
The Supreme Court has emphasized the strength and importance of comity and the due respect it requires in the seminal 1895 case of Hilton v. Guyot, holding that “a judgment between two parties “subject to the jurisdiction in which it is rendered, may be held conclusive as between them everywhere.”
KEY LAW ENFORCEMENT SEARCH TOOL FACES SUPREME COURT SCRUTINY
The Supreme Court in its 1895 Hylton opinion stressed that, “‘The comity thus extended to other nations … contributes so largely to promote justice between individuals, and to produce a friendly intercourse between the sovereignties to which they belong.’”
Res judicata, comity, full faith and credit, and respect for the rule of law demand that the Dutch court bow out. This dispute is being rightfully resolved in North Dakota, and courts outside North Dakota must honor the finality of that fact.
Donald J. Kochan is a professor of law and the executive director of the Law & Economics Center at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.
