Resolute Forest Products, Inc. v. Greenpeace International

Background

The plaintiffs are corporate entities that harvest wood to manufacture and sell paper products. The defendants are nonprofit environmental advocacy organizations and several employees. After an earlier dismissal ruling, the surviving claims were for defamation and a related California Unfair Competition Law claim. Those claims are based on statements made in December 2016 and May 2017 that the plaintiffs were operating in the Montagnes Blanches.

The statements followed a Quebec Minister of Forests, Wildlife, and Parks statement explaining that a map in a 2010 Greenpeace Canada report was misleading. The map had been used to show that the plaintiffs logged in the Montagnes Blanches.

Discovery dispute

The parties submitted a joint discovery letter. The plaintiffs sought discovery related to the Montagnes Blanches beginning June 1, 2012, approximately two months before the earliest effort they identified to accuse Resolute of operating there. The defendants argued that discovery should begin January 1, 2013, relying on the court’s earlier discovery order.

The court’s earlier order had found that information about how the Greenpeace defendants defined the Montagnes Blanches was directly relevant to actual malice. Actual malice, in this context, means making a false statement knowing it was false or while recklessly disregarding whether it was true. The earlier order stated that information reaching back to 2013 could be relevant to the defendants’ motivation and knowledge when they made the 2016 and 2017 statements.

Court’s reasoning

The court clarified that the earlier discovery order did not decide that information from before 2013 was necessarily undiscoverable. A December 2012 article published by non-party Greenpeace Canada asserted that the plaintiffs built logging roads in the Montagnes Blanches. The article included photographs and video that it said Greenpeace employees took in August 2012, and the defendants later disseminated the article in early 2013. The court concluded that information connected to the article, including the photographs and video, could lead to relevant information about the defendants’ definition of the Montagnes Blanches and their knowledge of its borders.

The court rejected the defendants’ arguments that earlier information was irrelevant because some earlier claims had been dismissed, because the defendants denied conducting a longstanding campaign, or because the December 2012 article allegedly concerned a different subject. The court said that the difference between the subjects was a factual dispute, not a reason to withhold discovery. It also explained that information obtained while making statements that were not actionable could still show what the defendants knew when they made the actionable statements.

Disposition

The court ordered that documents related to the Montagnes Blanches could be sought beginning June 1, 2012. This order addressed the scope of discovery; it did not resolve the merits of the surviving defamation or unfair-competition claims.