Encana, Talisman Energy, Suncor Energy, Husky Energy, Nexen, Syncrude.
All Canadian petroleum companies. More importantly, all publicly traded companies.
Strike suits have been long considered nuisance actions, meant to make a quick buck at the expense of the corporation.
My proposal is this: purchase shares in oil companies, and then file class actions whenever a pipeline bursts or a spill occurs, because the company has breached their fiduciary interest to shareholders.
Scenario #1: A nice little settlement. The big bad oil corp pays us all off to make it go away. I can pay off my student loan debt, and maybe do some investing. Maybe I’ll buy myself a nice electric bicycle.
Scenario #2: A nice little settlement. The court accepts our complaint, rules in our favour (“um yes, i totally reasonably expected there to not be any pipeline bursts which could affect the price of my shares” & “my interests were totally unfairly disregarded when they decided to build that pipeline”), and awards us hella damages. They also order the oil company to stop polluting, or something. I don’t know. I’ll probably buy myself two electric bicycles.
Scenario #3: There is no scenario #3. This is a win-win.
Who’s with me?
Course Facebook Page
You have my sword (jk I can’t afford a sword, or shares)
But in seriousness, regarding the reasonable expectations in Scenario #2: if the courts reject that shareholders had a reasonable expectation that pipelines were safe, they would be pretty well admitting that the basis of the project’s approval is false. I don’t know what the courts have said on challenges to fossil fuel developments on that point, but it would be interesting and possibly useful to have a judgement from the courts to that effect.
You might force a Canadian court to consider whether there’s any good faith duty to a prospective share purchaser like this — they’ll call it the “just wanting to watch the world burn” rule.