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ERIN BROCKOVICH – COMING TO A MINE NEAR YOU?
Commentary by Harold Hough April/May 2009

Remember Erin Brockovich? In the Hollywood movie, Julia Roberts played the real life single mother who took on a giant utility company that was supposed to be poisoning a small town. In the movie, viewers saw more of Ms. Robert’s legs and cleavage than truth. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the movie didn’t mention that the EPA never said that chromium 6, which was claimed to cause the town’s cancer problems, is carcinogenic.

Now Ms. Brockovich is the president of the consulting firm Brockovich Research & Consulting, which is involved in numerous major environmental cases, especially vague claims of health problems caused by rich corporations. A recent campaign was against an oil field at Beverly Hills High School, which was supposedly spewing carcinogens on campus and threatening the health of workers and students. According to her, she had tests that showed high benzene readings and 300 cases of staff, students, and alumni who had cancer.

Leave it to a small newspaper journalist to spill the truth. Norma Zager of the Beverly Hills Courier found that Ms. Brockovich’s firm had only found 94 cancer cases. She also learned that the TV producer who hyped the story in the first place had received money from Brockovich’s law firm when she ran for a city council seat.

Suddenly, Ms. Zager was the feisty lady taking on big moneyed interests. When contacted by the Wall Street Journal she said, “Now she is the big guy and I’m taking her on. And, I’ll go cleavage to cleavage with her any day of the week”.

Soon after these revelations, the Brockovich’s campaign over environmental contamination at the high school met with one reverse after another in court, ending in a judicial ruling of no merit. The lawyers on Brockovich’s side had to agree to reimburse the city and school district of Beverly Hills for $450,000. This was clear evidence of the baselessness of the claim because prevailing defendants very seldom recover fees from losing plaintiffs or their lawyers in American litigation.

Unfortunately, there is more to this case than that. There are ethical issues because lawyers are not permitted by their ethics codes to engage in "dishonesty, misrepresentation, fraud or deceit." Another provision: they must only bring lawsuits that the lawyer believes, in good faith, have genuine merit.
Yet, that didn’t stop the legal team that included Brockovich. Toxicologists, epidemiologists, and oil regulators all dismissed the assertions as quackery. What the mainstream media didn’t report was that the wells weren't leaking, the air was relatively clean, and rates of Hodgkin's disease around the school were normal. When asked if there was any evidence that benzene at the levels found at Beverly caused cancer, Thomas Mack, chief of the epidemiology division at the University of Southern California's medical school replied, "You're just as likely to get cancer from your car stereo."

It turned out that the tests taken by the Masry firm (the firm Brockivich worked for) at the school showed mostly normal readings. The firm finally had to admit in court that Brockovich's much publicized claim that the school had a cancer rate "twenty to thirty times the national average" was based on nothing. Nothing except a desire for huge damages, of course. Strange behavior for a lady who once said, “Deceit is the root cause of so many of our problems. Deceit robs us of information.”

LOOK OUT MINING

Why bring this case up? She is anti-mining, an eco-radical, and anti business. She encapsulated her position when she said, “We are all Al Gores.”

Brockovich has made it clear that she doesn’t like mining at all. She has tried to use her questionable methods to find health problems around an Australian Alcoa bauxite refinery. In the last few months she has recently focused on coal ash and recently noted in her blog that, “coal ash is nasty stuff to have floating around in your river, air, and drinking water.”

She has also become a cheerleading section for the Obama Administration’s global warming policies. “We are committing our own genocide and don't even seem to care. Does anyone care?” she bemoans in her blog. In her post inaugural blog, she noted, “I was spellbound by the inauguratory address of the forty-fourth president of the United States…He promises to deliver …solar and green energy.”
And, although Brockovich is making more money than any of us are, she seems to have problems with anyone else who makes money, especially if they are actually producers. She regularly attacks, “The corruption and the deceit perpetuated by industry.”

Given the green light given by the Obama Administration to trial lawyers, it is reasonable to assume that mining – especially coal mining - will become a target for a slew of lawsuits. So, if you see a middle age lady, with a dress showing a lot of cleavage at your mine, watch out.