The New Republic

"This is not a publicity stunt," Erin Brockovich-Ellis informs the
crowd gathered at the exclusive Beverly Hills Hotel. "This is not
about making another movie." It's March, and the famous
environmental crusader is speaking before hundreds of Beverly Hills
High School parents and alumni crammed into the hotel's Crystal
Ballroom. It's a strange confluence of Hollywood story lines: The
heroine of the 2000 film Erin Brockovich--whom Julia Roberts won an
Oscar portraying--is here to warn that current and former students
at the school on which "Beverly Hills 90210" was based are being
poisoned by toxic emissions from nearby oil wells.As just about anybody who has set foot in a multiplex knows, in the
mid-'90s Brockovich and her boss, lawyer Ed Masry, helped uncover
groundwater contamination in the central California town of Hinkley
and as a result won a massive settlement from Pacific Gas and
Electric (PG%amp%E). (As the film's promo line put it, "She brought
a small town to its feet and a huge company to its knees.") In the
decade since the Hinkley case, Masry and Brockovich-Ellis (she
changed her name after remarrying four years ago) have led several
more class-action suits against alleged corporate polluters, with
mixed results. Tonight, their crusade has brought them to Beverly
Hills.

Dressed in a dark business suit with a low-cut white top underneath,
Brockovich-Ellis explains that she was approached a few months
earlier at one of her book signings by a young woman, Lori Moss,
who had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease and thyroid cancer.
Brockovich-Ellis's interest was piqued: After all, Moss was only 28
years old and said she had already had two types of cancer. Where
did you grow up? Brockovich-Ellis asked. Beverly Hills, said Moss.
Were there industrial sites around? Moss explained that oil wells
abutted the campus of her high school, known colloquially as
"Beverly."

So Brockovich-Ellis came to Beverly to test the air. And what she
found was shocking. "I was just sitting in the bleachers," she
tells the gathered parents, "and we got benzene readings that were
at very alarming levels--at least five times higher than on the 405
[Freeway]." (Benzene, a natural component of crude oil, is a human
carcinogen and is commonly found at low levels in urban areas
because it is an automobile emission.) And it's not only the wells
still operating next to Beverly that pose a threat, she explains:
The school's football field sits "right over abandoned wells" that
were never properly capped. "And now they're leaking,"
Brockovich-Ellis reports. "I would not want my children playing on
that field. It's very heavily contaminated."

As many in the crowd gasp, Brockovich-Ellis describes the results of
this toxic exposure: More than 150 students and alumni have
contracted cancer (a number that will jump to 300 soon after the
meeting). Hodgkin's disease--which Brockovich-Ellis says is
associated with benzene--is occurring at 16 times normal levels,
thyroid cancer at 14 times normal levels. The average age of a
Beverly student or alumnus diagnosed with cancer is just 33. Dr.
James Dahlgren, a medical consultant working with Brockovich-Ellis,
briefly takes the podium and cautions, "These all could be an
aberration," before adding, "but you have a whole cluster of rare
and unusual cancers. That's why it's probably more than a
statistical blip."

Then Masry, Brockovich-Ellis's boss and partner-in-activism (played
by Albert Finney in the movie), steps up to the podium and drops
another bombshell: Not only are the wells causing cancer, the city
has known about the risks all along. Working through a PowerPoint
presentation, Masry, a small man in his early seventies looking
somewhat disheveled in a suit a size too big, pulls up a copy of a
document known as an environmental checklist form. Previous owners
of the wells submitted the form in 1984, when their lease to
operate the rigs was up for renewal. Masry reads aloud one of the
questions, "Will the proposal result in the creation of any health
hazard or potential health hazard?" The question offered three
possible boxes to check: Yes, No, or Maybe. The check was on Maybe.
"Maybe?" Masry bellows. "These guys suspected there might be a
problem. And yet they never did any testing." As Beverly parents
turn to one another in disbelief, Masry reads aloud from another
city document: "The [oil-well] project will result in substantial
economic benefits by the school district and city." The school
district and city, Masry explains, are making hundreds of thousands
of dollars annually from the wells.

One middle-aged father stands up and tries to challenge Masry.
"Mister Masry, " he begins, "I have spoken with [local health
officials], and they say you have not shared your data." Amid
murmurs from the crowd, Masry shouts, "Shut up! Quiet! I have made
appointments to do split samples. I can't dance anymore than I
already am." The parents cheer. Then another father speaks, his
voice rising above the crowd. "I will take it upon myself to shut
those wells down!" he shouts, amid chants of "Shut the pumps! Shut
the pumps!"

Masry and Brockovich-Ellis's claims are very dramatic. In all
likelihood, they are also wrong. A few months after the
presentation at the Beverly Hills Hotel, BrockovichEllis will
explain to People and The Economist, "I have 300 cancers staring me
in the face and an oil-production facility underneath the school.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the two fit
together." It may not require a rocket scientist, but it certainly
requires some compelling scientific evidence. And the preponderance
of evidence suggests that the Beverly oil wells are not having any
discernable impact on the health of Beverly students. Nor is
Beverly an isolated case. Many of Brockovich-Ellis and Masry's
other toxic-contamination lawsuits have been supported by
questionable scientific evidence at best, dating all the way back to
the case that made them famous.

Southern California isn't just a mecca for automobiles; it's also
full of oil. The first deposits were discovered and tapped at the
turn of the twentieth century. Since then, more than 50 oil fields
have been found and more than one billon barrels of oil extracted.
Few towns have benefited from the boom more-- or probably needed it
less--than Beverly Hills. In the early 1900s, prospectors
discovered that the wealthy enclave lay directly above a giant
deposit, estimated at more than 100 million barrels. On the grounds
of what is now Beverly, the first wells were drilled in 1906,
predating the school by 20 years. The wells on the site operated on
and off for years. Some, including those under what is now the
school's football field, were abandoned and capped. In the early
'80s, with production declining, the owners drilled 17 new wells,
which continue to pump today.

The March meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel wasn't the first time
Beverly parents heard that the long-standing wells might be harming
their kids. A month earlier, L.A.'s CBS affiliate, kcbs, broke the
story during sweeps week. The report--headlined "toxic
school?"--relied heavily on Masry and Brockovich- Ellis's
allegations. "If your child goes to Beverly Hills High School, you
should pay specific attention to this story," it began, "because
there is growing evidence that going to school, sitting in
classrooms, and especially exercising on the play fields could have
your child breathing toxic fumes." (The producer of the segment,
Claudia Bill-de la Pena, serves on the city council of Thousand
Oaks along with Masry. And, as was first reported in The Beverly
Hills Courier--the town's free weekly, which has distinguished
itself with aggressive reporting on the case--Masry and his wife
have both donated money to Bill-de la Pena's bids for office.)

In the weeks following the kcbs report and the March meeting,
Beverly Hills was in near pandemonium. Just a month after the
meeting, Masry filed 216 claims with the city, each one from a
student or alumnus who alleged the wells had poisoned them. In
addition to Masry's claims against the city, he filed suit in June
against the wells' owner, a regional oil company named Venoco; two
other oil companies that were connected to the wells by
subsidiaries; and Sempra Energy, which owns an office-building
heating-and-cooling unit on the same block. (Masry has not
publicized specific allegations against Sempra.) By early November,
the number of claims would swell to 664, mostly from alumni,
including 370 claiming cancer and 182 claimants demanding medical
monitoring and punitive damages based on "fear" or "risk" of
"developing cancer." The other claims run the gamut, from
"ear-ringing" and "frequent tingling sensation, " to "urinary
problems," "headaches," and "insomnia."

As Masry and Brockovich-Ellis spent the spring and summer signing up
clients- -and some parents threatened a school boycott, which
never materialized--a host of city and state agencies began
conducting environmental tests at Beverly. At first, in February,
they seemed to find something: The wells had occasionally been
venting natural gas into the air. For years, the local gas company
had bought natural gas from the wells, and, when the gas company
decided to implement stricter enforcement of its BTU rating for
natural gas during the summer of last year, the company found that
gas from the wells at Beverly did not meet the new requirements and
stopped buying the gas. Since Venoco couldn't pump oil without also
releasing natural gas, it simply vented the gas, which can contain
traces of benzene and other contaminants. Venoco says it believed
it had approval to vent--and at least one state official involved in
the Beverly case agreed. Regulators also found that a device meant
to control the purity of the natural gas coming from the wells,
called an amine unit, had improperly functioning filters and had
been modified without a proper permit. As a result of the improper
filters, the amine unit discharged a small amount of benzene.
Though the findings caused concern, neither issue seemed to
increase health risk. While natural gas can contain small amounts
of contaminants, "it isn't particularly harmful," says Sam Atwood,
a spokesman for Southern California's Air Quality Management
District (scaqmd), the region's air-quality agency. "It's basically
methane"--the same stuff human beings emit when they break wind. As
for the amine unit, the amount of benzene it gave off turned out to
be so minute as to be undetectable in the air around Beverly. And,
once the filters were replaced weeks after the test, the unit
emitted no benzene. Whatever the case, regulators asked Venoco to
shut the wells down, which it did in February. (Despite a petition
signed by about 2,000 parents, the wells opened again in late
October, after Venoco agreed to install continuous air-monitoring
equipment and paid a $10,000 settlement that admitted no
wrongdoing.)

While the scaqmd dealt with the apparent violation, health officials
looked more closely at Masry and Brockovich-Ellis's specific
allegations: Regulators tested the air for benzene and other
pollutants while the wells were venting gas, toxicologists took
ground samples, epidemiologists looked at cancer rates, and state
inspectors examined both the active and the abandoned wells at
Beverly.

Everything came up clean. The air wasn't particularly polluted (at
least by L.A. standards). Cancer rates in the neighborhood were
along the same lines as other white, wealthy neighborhoods in Los
Angeles. The ground wasn't contaminated with toxins. The old wells
weren't leaking, and the new ones were well-maintained.

Beginning in February and continuing throughout the spring, the
scaqmd, considered the country's toughest anti-pollution agency,
tested the air around Beverly six times--at multiple spots during
each test. The average reading for benzene--the only chemical
alleged to be leaking from the wells that is classified as a human
carcinogen--was about one part per billion, typical for Southern
California. (State regulators define the limit at which no
significant health effects can be expected over a lifetime of
constant exposure to benzene at 20 parts per billion.) The scaqmd
sent a letter to parents in April stating that the agency had found
"no readings of benzene, hexane, and air toxic levels that are
considered abnormal." Consultants hired by the school district also
tested the air and came up with similar results. (An environmental
consultant hired by a parent said the scaqmd and city-sponsored
reports didn't conclusively find that there were no health risks.
And, as part of its agreement to reopen, Venoco agreed to make an
overall assessment of the health risks.)

Masry argued to me that the SCAQMD efforts were "grossly negligent."
The tests, he claims, were only conducted for a few minutes and
only when the wells were turned off. "They weren't worried about
injury to kids or to schoolteachers; they were just worried about
getting the money." It's true that the scaqmd, a regional
government agency, receives a few hundred to a few thousand dollars
per year from the wells for standard permit fees. But, contrary to
Masry's other assertions, as the scaqmd explained in a detailed
letter to parents, it tested the air for eight-hour increments and
did so while the wells were operating.

While the scaqmd has been open with its data and testing
methodology, Masry and Brockovich-Ellis have not. When city
officials repeatedly asked Masry to share his overall test results,
Masry repeatedly refused. In the first week of June, the Beverly
Hills City Council forced the issue, serving Masry a legislative
subpoena (the municipal equivalent of a congressional subpoena).
The subpoena required Masry to turn in his data three weeks later.
Masry balked and continued withholding his test results, saying
that they were part of attorney work product--that is, analyses a
lawyer might use to build his case. Judge Valerie Baker, of the Los
Angeles Superior Court, didn't buy Masry's argument and on July 16
ordered Masry to produce the data or face fines. Finally, on July
22, nearly two months after the initial subpoena, Masry gave his
test findings to Beverly Hills.

Nearly all of Masry's data showed normal levels of benzene. The
highest benzene readings in Masry's tests are from an instantaneous
"grab sample" showing benzene at 18 parts per billion--still two
parts per billion less than the state's threshold. Masry's data
states that another test conducted simultaneously that sampled the
air for eight hours shows no measurable amount of benzene. The head
of research at the lab Masry used to compile his data told the
Courier, "When you're doing sampling, you don't want to base
health-risk decisions on a single sample result; that would be
irresponsible."; The failure to demonstrate elevated levels of
benzene in the air isn't the only weakness in Masry and
Brockovich-Ellis's case.

The failure to demonstrate elevated levels of benzene in the air
isn't the only weakness in Masry and Brockovich-Ellis's case. It
also appears unlikely that benzene causes the types of cancer that
they allege are rampant at Beverly. "At high dosages, benzene can
cause certain kinds of leukemia," says Dr. Thomas Mack, chief of
the epidemiology division at the University of Southern
California's medical school. "But there is no significant evidence
it causes Hodgkin's disease or non-Hodgkin's lymphoma." (Masry says
he has experts and studies that document a link between benzene and
those cancers. But, when I asked to speak to the experts or for
citations to the studies, he said, "Why would I do that? We'll wait
until we depose experts and see who is right and who is wrong.")

It's not even clear that there are increased rates of Hodgkin's
disease or non-Hodgkin's lymphoma around Beverly. In April, Masry
told the Associated Press that the school's cancer rate is 20 to 30
times the national average. "I've never seen cancers this high,"
Masry told me. "I've never even heard of them this high." At a
preliminary hearing for the case in July, a Beverly Hills city
attorney asked Masry's firm, Masry %amp% Vititoe, to produce
evidence backing up their publicly stated numbers. A lawyer for the
firm, Rick Ottaiano, asserted that he didn't have to hand over the
information, again invoking attorney work product. But Judge Baker
rejected that argument, and Ottaiano acknowledged that his firm had
no data on the rate of cancer at Beverly, stating, "There has been
no commissioned epidemiological study or population study."

Ottaiano seems misinformed. While Masry %amp% Vititoe apparently did
not conduct any scientific study of cancer rates around Beverly,
the cancer registry program at the University of Southern
California did. The program (which epidemiology chief Mack
participates in) tracks all cancers in L.A. County and looks for
trends, breaking down cases by race, age, gender, socioeconomic
status, neighborhood, etc. After the kcbs report, the registry
looked at the number of cancers in the neighborhood surrounding
Beverly. In the spring, it released its report, stating, "The
observed numbers of Hodgkin's lymphoma [aka Hodgkin's disease],
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and thyroid cancer among white residents
were within the expected range." (The researchers explained that
they couldn't calculate cancers among non-whites in that part of
Beverly Hills because "there were too few cases.")

It's true that the study did not calculate the rate of cancer at the
high school itself. Mack explains that, while cancer rates broken
down by census tracts are readily available, calculating the rate
of various cancers among alumni would be a far more involved,
expensive undertaking. "You'd first need to decide what your
denominator is," says Mack. "Everybody who attended Beverly for at
least a month, for at least a year? How about summer school? And
then you need to track down the people and then their medical
files." In Mack's estimation, there's no reason to do any of that.
Since the benzene around Beverly is at normal levels, he says,
"there's simply no evidence that it is a cause of concern."

As for what may seem to a layman like a large number of Hodgkin's
and other cancers among Beverly students and young alumni, Mack
says the numbers aren't atypical. Hodgkin's disease and
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma often afflict young adults and, for reasons
that aren't clear, are more prevalent in wealthy areas. (The
leading theory is that children with many siblings have a better
chance of early exposure to certain viruses that make them more
resistant to lymphomas-- and wealthier parents tend to have fewer
children.)

Epidemiologists, including Mack, acknowledge that they can't say
definitely that something in the air isn't causing a rise in cancer
rates. If benzene from Beverly's wells had caused two or three
cases of cancer--resulting in the rate of cancer in the
neighborhood increasing only slightly-- epidemiologists probably
wouldn't notice it, since the neighborhood's overall cancer rate
might still be within the range considered normal. (Epidemiologists
typically don't think anything less than one-and-a-half times the
expected rate is significant.)

Still, Mack says there's no reason for concern about Beverly
students. "We're always dealing with levels of probability; we
can't avoid that," he says. "But taking a neighborhood that has a
few cancers and then trying to figure out where they came from
usually isn't helpful. Instead, you look at the known risks. In
this case, is there any evidence that benzene at the levels found
by Beverly causes cancer? No. You're just as likely to get cancer
from your car stereo."

Finally, there is the supposed smoking gun that Masry waved about at
the Beverly Hills Hotel: the environmental checklist in which the
wells' owner at the time, the Beverly Hills Oil Company, had
checked a box saying "Maybe" the wells would cause adverse health
effects. What Masry and Brockovich-Ellis didn't mention was that
the checklist was only a follow-up form. The original
environmental-impact report, prepared by an environmental consulting
firm for Beverly Hills, detailed the wells' potential effects on
the air and how to mitigate them. It concluded that the wells,
which like other wells in urban areas would be electrically powered
to avoid polluting, would "emit minimal pollution." The only area
that merited concern--and thus the "Maybe" on the check form--was
diesel fumes from construction trucks at the site.

Masry's contention that the wells were never tested for problems is
also misleading. The scaqmd requires Venoco to test the wells for
leaks on a quarterly basis and promptly report any problems or face
fines and closure. Before this year, Venoco's Beverly Hills site
had never been cited for a violation. Indeed, Venoco had won an
award from state regulators for running a particularly clean
operation.

The lack of evidence that the Beverly wells pose a health risk
doesn't surprise Dr. Cyrus Rangan, director of toxics epidemiology
at L.A. County's Department of Health Services. "There are lots of
oil wells around Los Angeles, " he says. "And there's no evidence
that there's elevated cancer rates around any of them. Why this
one?" He adds, "I look at three big things in my job. Is there an
occurrence of disease out of proportion to what we would expect?
What is something that might cause that? And is there a connection
between the two? Masry and Brockovich's assertions don't satisfy
any of those conditions."

If there's no compelling evidence that benzene levels at Beverly are
dangerously high, nor that cancer rates among current and former
students are elevated, nor that the former would cause the latter
even if both were true, then why are hundreds of Beverly parents
and alumni suing?

In part, it's because of Brockovich-Ellis's reputation: People have
seen the movie, and they trust her. And much of the movie is
accurate. Brockovich-Ellis successfully demanded a job from Masry
after he failed to win her a settlement in a car-crash claim. In
1992, Masry was hired by a resident of Hinkley after the local
power company, PG%amp%E, acknowledged contaminating some of the
town's groundwater with chromium-6, a human carcinogen. As
Brockovich-Ellis worked on the case for Masry, she began, in her
estimation, to find evidence that PG%amp%E's contamination of the
groundwater was causing people in town to get sick.
Brockovich-Ellis collected clients, and Masry sued. The case went
to mediation, and, in 1996, PG%amp%E settled for $333 million, one
of the biggest environmental settlements ever made. "We screwed
up," said a PG%amp%E spokesman at the time.

But there are elements of the story that are still subject to
dispute. For instance, Brockovich-Ellis alleged that the local
water board had tried to keep files about the contamination
undercover, a point that the movie emphasizes. Hisam Baqai,
supervising engineer for the local water board, insists it isn't
true. "I don't know how she came up with secret stuff from the
files," he says. "All our files were public."

There's also a somewhat larger point the movie mischaracterizes:
Although there was contamination in Hinkley, there's virtually no
evidence that it made residents sick. Various studies have found
that chromium-6 is only carcinogenic when inhaled, not when
ingested, as Hinkley residents would have done when they drank the
contaminated water. As a 1998 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
report put it, "No data were located in the available literature
that suggested that chromium-6 is carcinogenic by the oral route."
(The reason, say researchers, is that stomach acid turns the toxins
into chromium-3, a harmless substance that can be found in food.)
Moreover, a joint federal-state study conducted in 2000 concluded
that, while some chromium-6 did indeed make it into some residents'
wells, it affected a small number of houses, about 15. (The study's
authors note that their findings aren't conclusive since they
didn't test until years after the contamination began and that,
theoretically, there may have been significant airborne
contamination years earlier.) "It was very localized," says Dr.
John Morgan, the epidemiologist who oversees the registry charged
with tracking cancers in Hinkley. "And the concentration of
chromium-6 in the most contaminated wells was in the order of
one-quarter-millionth to one- five-millionth the level that was
linked with nasopharyngeal carcinoma," the only type of cancer that
he says has been linked to the chemical. "Jumping to cancer from
that is a quantum leap in logic."

There is also no evidence that there even was a cancer cluster in
Hinkley. In 1995, Morgan looked for exactly that and didn't find
it. His ensuing report described the "absence of a cancer excess"
and concluded "that the number of new cancer cases observed in the
census tract encompassing Hinkley does not differ significantly
from the number expected." According to Morgan, neither
Brockovich-Ellis nor Masry ever asked the registry to look for a
cluster. "It's bizarre," he says, "to claim a cancer excess and
then never ask to investigate a cancer excess. Of course, it's only
bizarre if you're trying to get to the truth. If you're trying to
win a lawsuit, then perhaps better to say there may be an increase
than to know there's not."

Since Hinkley, Masry and Brockovich-Ellis have pushed similar claims
elsewhere, with what appears to be diminishing success. Their most
notable victory took place in the Northern California town of
Crockett. In summer 1994, Crockett residents were exposed to a
potentially toxic cloud for about two weeks, the result of a leak
from a nearby Unocal refinery. The leak--of a chemical cocktail
called Catacarb--went on for so long because the oil company
delayed notifying officials while the refinery kept operating. By
the time Unocal copped to the leak, so much Catacarb was around
Crockett that the company had to send crews around town washing off
cars and windows. Unocal eventually agreed to pay $3 million in
criminal and civil fines and, in April 1997, settled a class-action
suit, in which Masry %amp% Vititoe was one of many firms suing,
reportedly for $80 million.

Masry and Brockovich-Ellis were less successful in a lawsuit on
behalf of residents of Avila Beach, a town along California's
central coast, near San Luis Obispo. There has been an oil-storage
facility near the town since the early 1900s, and, in the late
'80s, authorities found that pipes running below Avila--also owned
by Unocal--had leaked. Health officials didn't find evidence that
the spill had come to the surface, but in late 1996 residents
nonetheless banded together and, represented by--among others--a
self-described small-town lawyer named Jim Duenow, sued Unocal. As
Duenow prepared his case, Brockovich- Ellis came to town. Duenow
remembers her as being persuasive. "She is a fine- looking lady,"
he says. "I would have signed anything she handed me."
Brockovich-Ellis soon began signing up clients of her own and
testing the beach. Before long, she announced that the spill had
come to the surface and that it was making people sick. A report
early the next year from Masry's law firm, as reported in the San
Luis Obispo New Times, concluded, "Adults and children who frequent
the beach engaging in typical beach activities, such as playing in
the sand, burying themselves in the sand and sunning themselves
would appear to be at great risk."

Duenow, whose case depended primarily on the effect the leaks had on
homeowners' property values, says he also researched the possibility
that they might cause health problems. "It just wasn't there," he
says now. "None of our clients had health damages related to the
contamination. ... There just weren't maintainable health claims."

As in Beverly Hills, county and independent toxicologists weren't
able to replicate Brockovich-Ellis's findings. "We sampled air,
sand, groundwater," says Alvin Greenberg, a toxicologist who
oversaw a report for the county investigating the claims. "We never
found evidence that subsurface contamination had come up." And, as
in Beverly Hills, Masry and Brockovich- Ellis avoided sharing their
data. "She accused me at a community meeting of not properly
reviewing her data," recalls Greenberg. "I apologized and said I
would examine it if she sent it to me. I never heard from her
again."

Asked today about the disparity between the county's findings and
his own allegations, Masry charges, "The county was concerned about
getting sued so they didn't find toxins. ... We find that all the
time with governmental agencies. They're just trying to cover their
ass." (Brockovich-Ellis declined repeated requests for comment.)

With their health claims falling apart, Masry retreated and
reportedly settled with Unocal in 1999 for a relatively small sum
for their roughly 60 clients: $3 million. The modest settlement
angered residents who had been led to believe that Unocal had
poisoned them. Masry and BrockovichEllis "came in and dramatized
what was going on and got everyone hooked," one former client told
the SLO New Times. "Nobody was happy with these lawyers, nobody."

Another environmental-contamination claim Masry's firm was involved
in between Hinkley and Beverly never even made it to the lawsuit
stage. In early 1998, the firm charged that Fontana, an industrial
town about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, was contaminated with
mercury. Fontana borders an acid pit created in the 1950s by
companies that dumped millions of gallons of waste--it has long
been an EPA Superfund site. Masry's experts, after hearing media
reports about a parent in town who thought that toxins might have
been responsible for the death of her daughter, showed up and said
they suspected mercury had leaked from the pit and spread into
town. The result, one resident told the local paper, was
"pandemonium and panic."

"People started putting their houses up for sale," recalls Fontana
Mayor Mark Nuaimi, who at the time was on the city council. Nuaimi
and other city officials asked Masry to share his findings, so
that, if there was a problem, they could address it. Masry, again,
resisted. "They came up with excuses when we asked for their
evidence," says Nuaimi. "When we asked to be escorted to a site,
they refused to go there."

When city health officials, accompanied by residents, took samples,
they found no trace of mercury. Masry "made allegations that were
never substantiated and accused agencies of cover-up," says Nuaimi,
who notes that Masry eventually left without filing suit. "They
feed off the hysteria and fear of the people, at least that's what
we found in our situation. It really is a story of crying wolf."
(Masry says he doesn't recall his firm's involvement in Fontana.)

The Beverly Hills case is still in the beginning stages, with
lawyers just beginning to joust. Depositions haven't even been
taken yet, and it will likely be another year or two before the
case makes it to trial. But it may not come to that. According to
legal scholars, 98 percent of tort cases get settled. And, while
it's certainly helpful to have the facts on your side, you can get
a large settlement without them. "There can be all sorts of reasons
for settling: Insurance issues, p.r. issues, et cetera," says
Margaret Berger, a professor at Brooklyn Law School. "Dying
children do not make a popular picture."

Indeed, the Beverly case has already taken a toll on the defendants:
In August, a Texas oil company, Holly Corporation, effectively
pulled out of its $450 million deal to merge with Frontier Oil, one
of the companies named in the Beverly suit. Citing the lawsuit as
the reason, the company tried to change the terms of the deal,
demanding all cash instead of Frontier stock. Frontier refused and
has sued for breach of contract.

If the case has already proved a loser for the oil companies
involved, it has already proved a p.r. windfall for Masry and
Brockovich-Ellis. And why not? It's the perfect combination of
stories: kids with cancer, "Beverly Hills 90210, " and a real-life,
Hollywood-endorsed hero. Sure enough, the suit has been covered by
media from New Zealand to Sweden, including CNN, "Good Morning
America," and "Today." Most of the coverage, unsurprisingly, is
deferential toward Masry and Brockovich-Ellis.

Such attention is particularly helpful to BrockovichEllis, who is
currently trying to cement her status as a celebrity folk hero.
Since January, she has been hosting a new TV show on the Lifetime
Channel entitled "Final Justice." (It's described on the program's
website as "True stories of ordinary women who fought back against
the system and won. ... Hosted by the underdog heroine herself.")
Brockovich-Ellis can also be found on the back of Organic Valley
milk cartons as a spokesperson for the environmental group
Children's Health Environmental Coalition, which offers an "Erin
Brockovich Action Kit" encouraging people to join the coalition and
support its mission "to protect children from toxic substances."
And she has been trying her hand at acting, performing in a recent
Los Angeles-area production of "The Vagina Monologues."

There is even a chance that Erin Brockovich II may be coming to the
box office. Brockovich-Ellis, of course, told the reporters
assembled at the Beverly Hills Hotel, "This is not about making
another movie." But, in September, "Celebrity Justice," an
"Entertainment Tonight"-esque, publicity- driven show, reported,
"Well-placed sources tell 'C.J.' the sequel is a go, ... with
Masry, Brockovich, and director Steven Soderbergh on board to parlay
this latest adventure into Erin Brockovich Two." Brockovich-Ellis
declined to comment.

By Eric Umansky

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