Trans Mountain drops civil lawsuit against protesters

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BURNABY (NEWS1130) – The company behind the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline has officially dropped all of the lawsuits filed against Burnaby Mountain protesters.

One of the defendants feels this shows Kinder Morgan filed the civil suits as a way to silence any opposition.

Civil suits were filed against five people Kinder Morgan accused of plotting to disrupt their survey work being done as part of the application to the Nation Energy Board. Allan Dutton is one of them and he says there was never any evidence he planned to do anything illegal and the fact the suit has been dropped shows that. “It’s more than that. It shows that when you fight back, you can have a positive response. We can’t just run for cover. We have to fight for our rights because no one else is goingt o protect them but ourselves.”

He hopes Kinder Morgan will learn a lesson from this if the project is approved. “They just simply can’t continue using the courts as they see fit and as they’re used to doing. Now, they’re going to have to take much more cognoscente of what people believe and what people feel and how worried people are.”

Ali Hounsell with Trans Mountain says the company never intended to pursue damages and says this action is following through with that promise. “Our only intention was to get the work done and I think this confirms it. We had no intention to stop free speech. In fact, we throughout the time up on Burnaby Mountain had encouraged it.”

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