Last year Alan Dean Foster revealed that the Disney corporation hadn’t paid him the royalties he was owed for various works in the Star Wars universe. With that also came the revelation that Disney also hadn’t paid a score of other authors, if not hundreds. Foster had been trying to get the matter addressed by Disney for years, but between corporate stalling and legal maneuvers, Foster couldn’t get anywhere until he took the matter public, and even with the publicity generated by SFWA [Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America] it took months for Disney to offer a settlement. But from various press reports, it appears that many other writers are in the same position and so far remain unpaid.

This is hardly a problem restricted to writers. It occurs time and time again when a large organization or corporation fires, dismisses, injures, or fails to pay employees or individuals who’ve provided services. A state university here in Utah fired a tenured professor, despite a finding by the university’s own grievance board that the firing was unjustified. After more than seven years of fighting the unjust termination, the professor ran out of money and settled for less than his legal fees alone. Another case of unjust termination by another professor is still pending. My wife’s university has a legal department with seemingly endless resources that dwarf anything that individual faculty members can muster… and the ability to draw out litigation and legal matters for years, if not decades.

The same problem exists with all large corporations. Even the federal judge overseeing PG&E, whose maintenance failures have led to two massive fires killing over a hundred people and destroying entire towns, found it impossible to make the company fully accountable or to obtain adequate restitution for those who lost their lives, largely because the corporation used its political muscle to change state regulation and oversight, and to shift the cost of clean-up to rate-payers rather than shareholders, while paying executives bonuses. And yes, PG&E was also the company Erin Brockovich proved was poisoning the water system of the town of Hinkley, and while she obtained a $333 million settlement, no individuals at the company were ever held responsible, and the settlement cost was passed on to rate-payers.

Theoretically, all people are equal under law, but when one “person” is a corporation, they’re no longer equal. First, there’s seldom any personal risk to anyone in the corporation so long as they’re legally maximizing profits, even though the corporation can be held liable. Second, no one but the federal government really has the resources to take on giant corporations in legal fights, and sometimes even the feds can’t. And third, corporations can last out any individual.

Which is why the only protection for individuals in a world where corporations have more rights than individuals lies in federal regulation – or in making those who run the corporations personally responsible and liable.