Characters: Erin Brockovich , Edward L. Masry , George, Donna Jensen , Charles Embry, Kurt Potter,Pamela Duncan ,Brenda , Theresa Dallavale, Matthew Brockovich, Katie Brockovich, Ms. Sanchez, David Foil, Donald Summary: In 1993, Erin Brockovich is an unemployed single mother of three children who, after losing a personal injury lawsuit against a doctor in a car accident she was in, asks her lawyer, Edward L. Masry (Albert Finney), if he can find her a job in compensation for the loss.
Ed gives her work as a file clerk in his office, and she sees the files in a pro bono real-estate case in which PG&E is offering to purchase the home of Hinkley, California, resident Donna Jensen. Erin is surprised to see medical records in the file and visits Jensen, who explains that she had just kept all her PG&E correspondence together. Donna is very appreciative of PG&E’s help: she has had several tumors and her husband has Hodgkin’s disease, but PG&E has always supplied a doctor at their own expense. Erin asks why they would do that, and Donna replies, “because of the chromium”.
Erin begins digging into the particulars of the case and soon finds evidence that the groundwater in Hinkley is contaminated with dangerous hexavalent chromium, but PG&E is telling Hinkley residents that they use a safer form of chromium in their cooling ponds. She persuades Ed to allow her further research, and wins the trust of many Hinkley residents. She finds many other cases of tumors and other medical problems in Hinkley. Everyone has been treated by PG&E’s doctors and thinks the cluster of cases is just a coincidence, unrelated to the “safe” chromium.
Eventually a man approaches her and says that he was tasked with destroying documents at PG&E, but he had noticed the medical conditions plaguing the workers who worked in the unlined ponds, and kept the documents instead. Now he gives them to her. One is a 1966 memo that ties a conversation of a corporate executive in the San Francisco PG&E headquarters to the Hinkley station: it proves that the corporate headquarters knew the water was contaminated with hexavalent chromium, did not do anything about it, and advised the Hinkley station to keep it a secret from the neighborhood.
Rather than delay any settlement for years through a series of jury trials and probable appeals, Ed takes the opportunity to arrange for a final disposition by binding arbitration. Erin is able to persuade the 634 plaintiffs to go along, and the evidence is examined by a judge without a jury. The judge orders PG&E to pay a settlement amount of $333 million divided among the plaintiffs. In the final scene, Ed hands Erin her bonus payment for the case, but says he has changed the amount.
She is astonished to see that he has increased it to $2 million. Reaction: The Julia Roberts film “Erin Brockovich” is in its fourth week as one of the most popular movies in America. It’s billed as being based on a true story. The film is about a down-on-her-luck but defiant, twice-divorced, working-class mother of three. As a lowly clerk in a small, private law firm, she independently starts looking into a case involving pollution in the small town of Hinkley, Calif.
In the movie, the foul-mouthed, full-cleavaged Brockovich travels to the town on her own initiative, investigates the case with the help of dogged smarts and a few low-cut dresses and persuades her employer to take on the case. When he joins forces with a big-time Los Angeles law firm, she defiantly resists. In time, her street smarts outbalance the incompetent, unfeeling lawyers at the downtown firm, and the residents come out with a $333 million award — and Brockovich herself gets a check for $2 million.
