This couldn’t have happened to a nastier bunch of individuals.

Nearly a year after a nine-person jury found Greenpeace liable for $667 million in damages in a case related to the Dakota Access Pipeline, a North Dakota judge has said the environmental organization will soon be ordered to make good on the damages.

In court papers filed Tuesday, Judge James Gion granted a motion filed by Energy Transfer, the company that owns the pipeline, and said he intends to issue the final judgment on the case soon. The final judgment will detail what the three Greenpeace entities named in the lawsuit are expected to pay, but the amounts were not included in Tuesday’s filings. Gion did, however, reduce Greenpeace’s total liability after the jury’s verdict to $345 million.

Energy Transfer sued Greenpeace in 2019 for its involvement in a massive, months-long and sometimes violent protest against its Dakota Access Pipeline, which was installed in 2016 and 2017. The nearly 1,200-mile crude oil pipeline crosses the Missouri River upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, and protesters said the pipeline would threaten the tribe’s water supply and destroy important cultural sites.

Maybe they’ll succeed on appeal or settle. Still, if the ruling on their egregious, illegal blocking of the Dakota Access Pipeline remains and forces Greenpeace into bankruptcy, it would be well‑earned. It’s oddly fitting that an group whose long‑standing goal has been to drive private firms into financial ruin might now face bankruptcy itself.