ABSTRACT
When a 23-year-old woman stayed on top of a 180-foot California Redwood tree for 738 days to protest the logging by the Pacific Lumber Company, it was more than news. It was a major challenge by a frail woman of strong convictions to a big company that was founded in 1863. She did not come down the tree until the company had agreed not to cut not only that tree (affectionately named Luna by its savior) but the majestic redwoods in a three-acre buffer zone around it. In another “David vs. Goliath” example, an unemployed former postman and a part-time gardener were dragged to court by McDonald’s for libel because the two (and a few of their associates) had distributed leaflets criticizing the multi-billion-dollar corporation for such things as depressing wages, serving unhealthy food and cruelty to animals. The two activists argued their own case against the high-paid libel attorneys that McDonald’s could afford, and the trial entered the record books as the longest trial in UK history. In the end, although the judge ruled partially in McDonald’s favor and granted a modest 60,000 British pounds, he also agreed with several of the accusations contained in the leaflet and did not offer an injunction against its distribution. The overall effect was that McDonald’s lost millions in legal fees and lost hours when corporate executives had to travel to London to testify. The greater damage, however, was in the court of public opinion, and the McLibel case (as it is popularly known) even got its own web site-McSpotlight-that had received some 2.2 million hits by the time the case in the UK had been adjudicated and millions more since then.
