Erin Brockovich (film) - Plot

Plot

In 1993, Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is an unemployed single mother of three children, who was injured in a traffic accident with a doctor and is suing him. Her lawyer, Ed Masry (Albert Finney), expects to win, but Erin's attitude in the courtroom makes her lose the case. She tells Ed he should find her a job in compensation. 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 Pacific Gas and Electric (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 nothing 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 agreed bonus payment for the case, but says he has changed the amount. She starts to complain that she deserves more respect, but is astonished to see that he has increased it to $2 million.