I don't know about the rest, but Mexico won the Metalclad case; there's still no toxic waste dump there. Mexico had to pay for the stuff they told Metalclad to build while knowing all along they were going to deny the dump.

This is incredible. Reading the details of the cases listed on that site makes me feel sick. And there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Those pre-TPP cases are nothing compared to the future combined scope of TPP (Pacific), TTIP (Europe) and RCEP (China, Korea, India, and other Asian countries).

Never say there is nothing you can do. Tell other people about ISDS. Share the videos [1][2][3][4].

Jon Oliver's video [4] about the Philip Morris tobacco ISDS lawsuit against Australia (for brown paper packaging) caused such an outcry that TPP negotiators were forced to exclude the entire tobacco industry from ISDS. This is the first time such an industry-specific carve-out has appeared in a trade agreement.

[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=M9ZFDpuiFUs

[2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=M4-mlGRPmkU

[3] https://youtube.com/watch?v=AABOIcXZZwg

[4] https://youtube.com/watch?v=6UsHHOCH4q8

Whenever I think about this for more than a passing moment I just become so scared and angry. How the fuck is a company able to take a country to court over a public health measure? Who the fuck voted for the evil bastards who made that possible? How do they fucking live with themselves?

The ones who listen to what they "will do", complain about what they do, then promptly forgets during the buildup to the next election.

The ones who follow "the line" and are afraid of getting ostracized by their peers.

The ones who value pocket change now over future prospects.

Easy. Sociopaths. They are insect minds wrapped in human skin. Wolves in sheep's clothing if there ever was such a thing.

Claire Patterson was able to run a successful one man campaign against lead in our products.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson#Campai...

I do not think that a corporation should not be allowed to challenge a government due to decisions impacting its business. Some of its actions can be very harmful to businesses. If an harm is done, the victim should be able to initiate a process of _public_ investigation (which ISDS seems not to be, I wonder why) and if the government is shown to have done wrong, the corporation should have the possibility to get compensated.

The above Saluka v. Czech Republic case got me interested, so I have read a little on this. At the time Japanese Nomura had invested in Czech IPB bank in 1998, there was an international treaty on protection of investments in effect between the Czech republic and the Netherlands. Nomura had transferred the 46% ownership of IPB to their Netherlands-based fund Saluka (I am not sure on legality of this operation). The lawsuit took place after Czech government's actions reacting to IPB bank falling down. Nomura was partially responsible for the downfall as it did not make promised actions to help the bank, but the government also had their feet wet when later they helped other banks in similarly bad shape, but did not help IPB. Nomura was smart and resourceful enough to point out this is in odds with the above treaty and benefit from the situation. The government has tried to sue Nomura as well for its actions/inactions and law breaking for 240 billion crowns, but then dropped it to make an agreement with Nomura.

An international arbitrage took place in 2006-8 which found 5 out of 8 claims made by Saluka to be invalid, but the remaining 3 were found to be valid. The most important finding was that the Czech republic did not give the same kind of financial assistance to the IPB bank it had given to other banks in similar shape and thus failed to honor the international treaty ion investment protection. Saluka demanded 30 billion crowns as a compensation, the arbiters decided only 3.5 billion crowns, equal to initial Nomura's investment, should be payed. In this case at least, it seems to me, legally things worked well - the government screwed up, it got sued, it lost and it paid up.

Sorry for the long write-up. What's the morale of the story? I am not outraged so much by the possibility of corporation suing the government as by government's utter ineptness. We need more efficient, less corrupt government that can follow and enforce meaningful rules and at the same time, keep nasty investors and their schemes in check.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2144277

http://www.protext.cz/zprava.php?id=2487 http://www.kurzy.cz/zpravy/117569-respekt-nomura-na-investic... http://www.rozhlas.cz/radiozurnal/publicistika/_zprava/jan-m...