In 1993, Erin Brockovich (Julia
Roberts) is an unemployed single mother of three children, who has
recently been injured in a traffic accident with a doctor and is suing
him. Her lawyer, Ed Masry (Albert Finney), expects to win, but Erin's
explosive courtroom behavior under cross-examination loses her the case,
and Ed will not return her phone calls afterwards. One day he arrives
at work to find her in the office, apparently working. She says that he
told her things would work out and they didn't, and that she needed a
job. He feels bad for her, and decides to give her a try at the office.
Erin is given files for a real-estate case where 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 Donna, who explains that she had simply
kept all her PG&E correspondence together. Donna appreciates
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 case and finds
evidence that the groundwater in Hinkley is seriously contaminated with
carcinogenic hexavalent chromium, but PG&E has been telling Hinkley
residents that they use a safer form of chromium. After several days
away from the office doing this research, she is fired by Ed until he
realizes that she was working all the time, and sees what she has found
out.
Rehired, she continues her research, and over time, visits
many Hinkley residents and wins their trust. She finds many 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. The Jensens' claim for
compensation grows into a major class-action lawsuit, but the direct
evidence only relates to PG&E's Hinkley plant, not to the senior
management.
Knowing that PG&E could delay any settlement for
years through delays and appeals, Ed takes the opportunity to arrange
for disposition by binding arbitration, but a large majority of the
plaintiffs must agree to this. Erin returns to Hinkley and persuades all
634 plaintiffs to go along. While she is there, a man approaches her to
say that he and his cousin were PG&E employees, but his cousin
recently died from the poison. The man says he was tasked with
destroying documents at PG&E, but, "as it turns out, I wasn't a very
good employee".
He gives Erin the documents: a 1966 memo proves
corporate headquarters knew the water was contaminated with hexavalent
chromium, did nothing about it, and advised the Hinkley operation to
keep this secret. The judge orders PG&E to pay a settlement amount
of $333 million to be distributed among the plaintiffs.
In the
final scene, Ed hands Erin her bonus payment for the case but warns her
he has changed the amount. She explodes into a complaint that she
deserves more respect, but is astonished to find that he has increased
it—to $2 million.
