Timothy Smith, career financial do-gooder, has spent decades at socially responsible investment organizations nagging business executives to do the right thing on issues from workers rights to corporate governance without drawing an angry word.
So how did things get so nasty in Ohio, where uniform maker Cintas Corp. is suing Smith and his Boston employer, Walden Asset Management, for defamation over comments he made during a three-minute speech at the company's last annual meeting?
Shareholder-rights groups are howling over the potentially chilling effect of companies suing dissidents who stand up and criticize managers at public stockholder forums. Cintas insists Smith went over the line taking sides in a union dispute by linking the company to foreign sweatshops and had to take action.
Smith declined to talk about the lawsuit, which was filed in January. His lawyer, Don Kennedy, said he expected to file a response soon.
"This is a big, big deal in my industry," says Amy Domini, president of Domini Social Investments. "You're talking about somebody with a 30-year track record of standing up at annual meetings and asking for better reporting and increased transparency."
Smith has asked for more than that over many years. He came directly out of the Union Theological Seminary in New York to work for the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility in the early 1970s. The top priority of that day, shareholder activism pushing companies to get out of South Africa, produced slow but certain results.
Smith came to Boston in the fall of 2000 to work on social research and advocacy at Walden Asset Management, which invests $1.3 billion for clients. He's involved in about 30 shareholder resolutions at public companies this year.
His current portfolio of issues ranges from practical corporate governance -- mostly attacking staggered boards whose members come up for reelection in classes spread out over several years -- to social agendas like the treatment of employees and monitoring of working conditions elsewhere when production is contracted out overseas.
Working conditions and outsourcing were the themes that caused all the trouble at Cintas. Smith spoke at the company's annual meeting last fall in support of a shareholder resolution he filed jointly with Domini.
The proposal asked Cintas to prepare a report on the code of conduct it demands of contractors and its ability to monitor actual conditions.
During his comments, according to the lawsuit, Smith defamed Cintas by claiming that a company subcontractor was making uniforms at a factory in Haiti "which is a poster child for sweatshops."
The suit alleges Smith was repeating false claims made by an American union in the midst of a dispute with Cintas.
"We contend the allegations were false and damaging," a company spokesman says. "This really has nothing to do with shareholder resolutions or open debate."
Usually, the biggest concern for anyone attending a company annual meeting is the embarrassment of snoring in public. On those rare occasions when shareholders want to tell off management, almost anything goes.
Investor advocates say they can't remember a company ever suing a shareholder over comments at an annual meeting. I couldn't find another case, either.
Smith seems to have stepped into the crossfire of a nasty union dispute, intentionally or otherwise. I have no idea what he really said, let alone whether it was true or not. But spending company money to sue shareholders for speaking up is almost always a dumb idea.
Steven Syre is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at syre@globe.com.