ABSTRACT
In the year 2000, US legal treatises were updated to account for a new landmark case. The update was listed under the rubric “malicious prosecution” and the main protagonist was Shell Oil Co. In the early 1990s, the courts of the state of Alaska were swamped with lawsuits arising from the conduct of oil multinationals. Oil multinationals are among the economically and politically most powerful companies in the world. As such, they are able to influence outcomes in all relevant levels of decision making, be it environmental or tax policies, court rulings, or infrastructure planning. Against this power, the feeble strength of any individual worker or campaigner is near meaningless. To keep the disproportionate power of oil multinationals in check requires the concerted, collaborative effort of organized labor, state regulators, with its inspectors, administrators, and so forth, and the judicial system.
