Erin Brockovich

A 2002 film directed by Steven Soderbergh tells a dramatization of the true story of Erin Brockovich who fought against the US West Coast energy corporation Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) of California in 1993.

Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is an unemployed single mother of three 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 help her find a job. Edward gives her work as a file clerk in his office and she runs across some information on a little-known case filed against Pacific Gas and Electric Company. Erin begins digging into the particulars of the case, convinced that the facts simply don't add up and persuades Edward to allow her to do further research. In time, she discovers a systematic cover-up of the industrial poisoning of a city's water supply, which threatens the health of the entire community.

ERIC BROCKOVICH-ELLIS
(Born June 22, 1960)

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 which proves that the corporate headquarters knew the water was contaminated with hexavalent chromium but did not do anything about it.

EDWARD LOUIS MASRY
(Jul 29, 1932 - Dec 5, 2005)

Rather than delay any settlement for years through a series of jury trials and probable appeals, Edward 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.

In 1996, the judge orders PG&E to pay a settlement amount of $333 million divided among the plaintiffs which was the largest in a direct-action lawsuit in U.S. history. In the final scene, Edward hands Erin her bonus payment for the case, but says he has changed the amount and she is astonished to see that he has increased it to $2 million.

By the way, Edward L. Masry has a non-speaking cameo in the film as a diner patron sitting behind Julia Roberts, the same diner that cameos Erin Brockovich as a waitress named Julia R. To date, Erin Brockovich is the president of a consulting firm Brockovich Research & Consulting and is currently working as a consultant for Girardi & Keese, the New York law firm Weitz & Luxenberg, which has a focus on personal injury claims for asbestos exposure and Shine Lawyers in Australia.

We all have our own life to pursue, 

our own kind of dream to be weaving 

and we all have the power to make wishes come true, 

as long as we keep believing that can make anything happen. 

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