By Meredith Hobbs, From Daily Report

Opponents of King & Spalding’s clients tend to do their talking in court, but activists in London last week took a novel approach: an exorcism.

British activists Global Justice Now, in concert with Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir from New York, targeted King & Spalding’s London office to protest the firm’s representation of multinational corporations suing national governments over policies that dent their profits.

“We exorcise you from this brutal slab of architecture, King & Spalding,” Reverend Billy pronounced after a preliminary sermon at the entrance to the firm’s building at 125 Old Broad St., according to Global Justice Now, which live-tweeted photos of the event.

The protest was a response to a wide-ranging, multilateral free-trade agreement on the table between the European Union and the United States: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

One controversial TTIP provision, called Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), would allow foreign investors to sue an EU state or the EU itself for damages from policies that they think have hurt their corporate profits.

Global Justice Now in the U.K. and European groups such as the European Citizens Initiative that oppose the TTIP say it would increase the power of multinationals at the expense of democracy and the rule of law.

Global Justice Now’s website says it targeted King & Spalding because of the firm’s large foreign investor-state treaty arbitration practice.

King & Spalding represents multinational corporations in similar arbitration claims against national governments before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes at the World Bank, under the provisions of bilateral investment treaties.

Global Justice Now highlighted King & Spalding’s representation of French utility company Veolia in a $92 million investment treaty suit that it filed against Egypt in 2012 after the country raised the monthly minimum wage from 400 to 700 Egyptian pounds ($56 to $99).

Veolia is claiming breach of a waste disposal contract that it has with the city of Alexandria, because the city refused to change the contract to meet higher costs from the wage increase. Veolia is claiming additional damages because the local police failed to prevent the widespread theft of trash cans by Alexandrians.

“This is a taste of what the EU-U.S. trade deal TTIP could bring us if it is implemented,” Global Justice Now said.

The U.K. activists turned to Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir to perform the exorcism of the firm. The New York activists and performance artists were in London for the tour of their musical, “Faster, Monsanto! Die! Die!” which criticizes big corporations’ role in climate disruption and mass extinction—a top issue for them right now.

The show played on Saturday at Wilton’s Music Hall, which billed the performers as “by turns attracting critical and popular acclaim and threats of serious jail time.”

Global Justice Now live-tweeted photos of the Thursday protest. The tweets show Reverend Billy exhorting the firm in a sermon to “pray for your souls for all the evils of #ISDS cases,” and then performing the “exorcism of corporate power.”

A Global Justice Now campaigner, Guy Taylor, wrote an eyewitness account of the protest in a blog entry called “Cleansing the souls of the international arbitration industry.”

“Ranks of city workers stopped to film the proceedings and the Stop Shopping Choir showed their tuneful talent as the evil from King & Spalding International LLP was driven from the building before them,” Taylor wrote.

“It’s not clear whether the executives of King & Spalding got on their knees and presented themselves naked before the Lord on Thursday as Reverend Billy commanded them to,” he added.

The firm had no comment.

IMAGE: Activist and performance artist Reverend Billy leads an “exorcism of corporate power” in front of King & Spalding’s London office with protestors from Global Justice Now to oppose the firm’s representation of multi-nationals that sue national governments over policies the corporations find unfavorable. Courtesy Global Justice Now

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