Brockovich-PG&E case

Date: Settled out of court in 1996

The Event: A law firm filing clerk instigated an investigation into the contamination of a small California town’s water supply with a chemical toxin known as chromium 6 by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) that led to the largest settlement ever paid in a lawsuit in the United States up to that time.

Significance: Because the terms of the PG&E settlement have never been made public, details of the forensic investigation leading to that settlement are mostly unknown. Nevertheless, the commercial and critical success of the motion picture Erin Brockovich (2000) helped elevate public awareness of the importance of forensic science in identifying toxic pollutants in the environment. The case itself was regarded as a precedent for future litigation for similar cases.

Thanks to a major Hollywood film using her name for its title, Erin Brockovich is indelibly associated with one of the biggest water-contamination cases in U.S. history. While working as a filing clerk in a Southern California law firm, she investigated medical records connected with a real estate case and found evidence that a PG&E facility connected with a natural gas pipeline had contaminated the drinking water of the tiny Mojave Desert community of Hinkley, California, from the 1960’s through the 1980’s. Brockovich’s investigation helped trigger the class-action suit brought against PG&E, and she received a significant share of the money that came out of the case’s settlement. However, much of the impetus for the case was provided by residents of Hinkley themselves. Brockovich’s name is closely tied to the case largely because of the unusual circumstances of her personal involvement, which was magnified by the film made about the case.

Brockovich’s interest in environment cases began after she had been seriously injured in a traffic accident in Nevada. To represent her interests in the legal suit emerging from that accident, she engaged the Thousand Oaks, California, law firm of Masry & Vititoe. Soon afterward, the firm hired her to work as a file clerk, although she was not a college graduate and had no legal training.

While filing papers for a real estate case concerning the community of Hinkley during the early 1990’s, Brockovich found information in medical records of Hinkley residents that piqued her curiosity. With her employer’s permission, she began researching the matter. Her investigation found that the health of many people who lived in and around Hinkley during the three preceding decades had been damaged by exposure to hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium 6, a suspected carcinogen that had leaked into the groundwater from PG&E’s nearby repressurization station. Brockovich’s investigation eventually led to a class-action lawsuit against PG&E, which settled most of the cases out of court by paying $333 million in damages to more than six hundred Hinkley residents.

Background

Hinkley, California, is the site of a repressurization, or compressor, station built by PG&E in 1952 to help push natural gas through a long pipeline that connects Texas with Northern California. As gas moves through pipelines, friction causes it to lose the pressure it requires to keep it moving. Compressor stations like that of Hinkley raise the pressure within pipelines to facilitate the transmission of the gas. The gas compressors themselves require cooling, which is done with oil and water. To prevent rust from corroding the cooling system PG&E, PG&E put chromium 6 in the water. Chromium 6 is one of the cheapest and most efficient corrosion inhibitors but is also a highly toxic chemical that many scientists believe is a carcinogen. Between 1952 and 1966 alone, the runoff of fluids from Hinkley’s pumping station’s cooling system poured about 370 million gallons of chromium-tainted water into the open and unlined ponds near the community.

During an environmental assessment in 1987, PG&E discovered that chromium 6 had entered Hinkley’s groundwater supply and contaminated ten private drinking wells with concentrations of the chemical that exceeded the safety standard set by the state. In December, 1987, PG&E notified the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Board (LRWQB), which managed local water sources, about the contamination. The LRWQB quickly ordered PG&E to clean up the contaminated groundwater. PG&E began to comply, but, after spending $12.5 million on the effort, it approached the owners of three farms and ten houses drawing on the groundwater to inquire about buying their property. When the company offered to pay ten times fair market value for one property, other Hinkley residents became suspicious and took measures to file suit against PG&E.

For the first time, Hinkley residents began to believe that PG&E’s use of chromium 6 was causing severe health problems within their town. Many residents cited such health problems as cancer, tumors, and birth defects. PG&E countered by arguing that the incident rates of the health problems the residents cited were not statistically significant in a population the size of Hinkley, even though residents were drinking, bathing in, and inhaling vapor from water contaminated with chromium 6 every day.

Eventually, with the help of Brockovich and the firm for which she worked, approximately 650 plaintiffs claimed that PG&E had failed to warn them adequately of the potential health risks associated with the chromium 6 exuded by the company’s compressor plant. Their lawyers also alleged that two PG&E employees who had become whistle-blowers had been instructed by PG&E to dispose of all records from the Hinkley compressor station. The lawsuit the residents filed in 1993 was eventually settled for a $333 million payment in an undisclosed arbitration agreement. Other cash settlements were made over the ensuing decade.

PG&E’s out-of-court settlement may have allowed the company to escape a finding of liability by a court, as settlement offers cannot be used in court as evidence of one party’s wrongdoing. Because the arbitration was closed to the public, it remains unclear exactly what scientific proof of harm plaintiffs in the case presented or whether PG&E’s actions actually damaged the health of Hinkley residents. However, in the public’s perception, PG&E’s $333 million settlement was equivalent to a conviction. PG&E’s alleged cover-up of its activities and the sheer size of the settlement dramatically increased the intrigue of the story and helped to focus public attention on the potential dangers of chromium 6. Despite the size of the settlement, the Hinkley case and the dangers of chromium 6 might have been quietly forgotten, had the story not become the subject of a major Hollywood film.

The Erin Brockovich Film

Erin Brockovich’s role in the PG&E case inspired a film in the year 2000 that used her name for its title and starred Julia Roberts as Brockovich. The film was an instant box-office hit and eventually grossed almost as much money as PG&E had paid out in its 1996 settlement. The film also received many major awards, including five Academy Award nominations, and won Roberts the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role. More important, the film did a great deal to raise public awareness of the dangers of chromium 6 but did not do so without controversy. PG&E downplayed the film’s message, claiming that the story had been highly dramatized for entertainment value, and it sent a memo to its employees warning them that not everything in the film was true. Regardless of the film’s historical accuracy, however, it clearly increased public awareness of the importance of water quality and the role that forensic scientists play in uncovering environmental crimes. It also opened up discussion for proponents of more stringent water regulation by creating a media forum in which broader issues of water quality were addressed.

Erin Brockovich led to several concrete changes in government policies regarding environmental health. For example, the state of California passed two bills requiring assessment of chromium 6 levels in drinking water in its San Fernando Basin aquifer and setting limits for chromium 6 in drinking water sources. The federal government allocated $3 million for a treatment plant and technology to remove chromium 6 from drinking water.

Despite the critical acclaim and commercial success enjoyed by the film Erin Brockovich, the Brockovich-PG&E case has continued to generate controversy. Some scientists have concluded that chromium 6 is not, after all, a carcinogen. In 2001, the Chromate Toxicity Review Committee, a panel made up of university scientists that had been formed at the request of the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) concluded that there was no basis for concluding that chromium could cause cancer when ingested through water. Although the panel’s report posed a serious challenge to future lawsuits concerning water contamination, some critics suggested that the panel’s composition was suspect and its report had been skewed to protect the utility industry’s interests.

Bibliography

Banks, Sedina. “The ’Erin Brockovich Effect’: How Media Shapes Toxics Policy.” Environs: Environmental Law and Policy Journal 26 (2003): 219-251. Presents an interesting exploration of the impact of the film Erin Brockovich on public policy decisions.

Brockovich, Erin, and Marc Eliot. Take It from Me: Life’s a Struggle but You Can Win. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. Motivational autobiography in which Brockovich recounts the events in her life that led to her involvement in the PG&E case.

Egilman, David. “Corporate Corruption of Science: The Case of Chromium (VI).” International Journal of Occupational Environmental Health 12 (2006): 169-176. Scholarly discussion addresses the controversy over the suspected health hazards of chromium 6.

Ellis, Erin Brockovich, and Dan Levine. “Erin Brockovich.” Conservation Matters 8 (June 22, 2001): 12. Views the film Erin Brockovich in the broader context of the impacts on the environment of PG&E’s practices.

Grant, Samantha. “Erin Brockovich”: The Shooting Script. New York: Newmarket Press, 2001. Complete script of the Hollywood film based on the Brockovich-PG&E case; edited, with notes, by the original screenwriter, Samantha Grant.

Martens, Daniel L. “Chromium, Cancer, and Causation: Has a Death-Blow Been Dealt Chromium Cases in California?” Natural Resources and Environment 16 (2002): 264-266. Focuses on the possible legal impacts of the Brockovich case.

Pellerin, Cheryl, and Susan M. Booker. “Reflections on Hexavalent Chromium: Health Hazards of an Industrial Heavyweight.” Environmental Health Perspectives 108 (2000): A402-A407. Discusses the potential hazard posed to the environment by chromium 6.