Two of Greenpeace USA’s top legal experts have departed the organization amid a high-stakes legal battle that the group says poses a threat to the entire environmental movement.
Former Greenpeace General Counsel Jay Meisel left his position in September and Deepa Padmanabha, a Greenpeace senior legal adviser, stepped down this month.
The turnover comes as Greenpeace continues to fight a verdict ordering the nonprofit to pay more than $660 million in damages to a pipeline developer in a long-running legal fight.
The staff departures also follow the exit last year of Greenpeace’s then-Executive Director Ebony Twilley Martin, whose allies said she was sidelined during an internal power struggle surrounding the legal fight against the pipeline developer Energy Transfer Partners.
