This Tom Fowler/Chronicle article reports on a retired commercial painter from Ohio is engaging in a rather novel protest of the absolute priority rule, the bankruptcy principle that prevents shareholders from receiving any value under a bankruptcy plan unless creditors either are paid in full or agree that the shareholders can receive something:

Calpine Corp.’s emergence from bankruptcy protection in the coming days will end a tough chapter in the history of Texas’ No. 3 power producer, but don’t expect applause from shareholder Robert Strouse.
The retired commercial painter from Ohio likely will continue his vigil in front of the company’s downtown Houston offices where he’s been protesting the bankruptcy plan for the past two weeks.
“They’d like me to go away, but I’m going to hang on as long as I can,” said Strouse, 62.
Strouse claims the company misled him about the price he could expect for his stock when Calpine emerges from bankruptcy ó a charge the company denies. [. . .]
Strouse said his quarrel with Calpine began last month after a phone conversation with an investor relations official. He said he was told his 5,000 shares probably would be valued at about $1.60 each under the company’s reorganization plan. That’s a far cry from the $5.12 each he paid for them in March 2004, but better than nothing, he figured, so he voted in favor of the plan.
The plan that came out of the bankruptcy court in December, however, wasn’t what he expected. It will cancel outstanding shares of common stock like his and replace them with warrants ó the right to purchase new Calpine stock ó but at a price likely higher than that at which the stock will begin trading.
“They lied to me, plain and simple,” Strouse said.

Calpine said it didn’t mislead Strouse and has been careful to tell all shareholders the same thing about the reorganization plan: that shareholders’ stake in the company might have no value. [. . .]
Strouse arrived in Houston from his home in Amelia, Ohio, via Greyhound bus earlier this month and has been renting a room at the downtown YMCA for about $130 per week.
He said he wanted to meet face to face with Calpine CEO Bob May, who sometimes works out of the office at 717 Texas Ave., but had to settle for coffee with an investor relations official. She didn’t give him the answers he wanted, he said, so he bought some foam board and made a sign stating his complaints with the company.
Nearly every weekday he paces back and forth with the sign in front the Texas Avenue building where Calpine has its largest office, including its energy trading staff.
Workers regularly take pictures of him with their cell phone cameras, he said, but no one has tried to hamper his protest.
When it rains or he needs a break, Strouse ducks into a sandwich shop on the building’s ground floor. He usually sits by a window eating lunch or calling friends and family using Skype, an inexpensive Internet-based phone service, over his laptop.
Money has gotten tight, Strouse said, but his house in Ohio is paid for and he already has a return trip ticket, so he’s not in a rush to leave Houston or halt his protest. . . .