Erin Brockovich, which is based on a true story takes place in the mid nineties in California. Erin Brockovich started working for Ed as a legal secretary, who has a small law firm. As she was clearing up files, she comes across a real estate file, and wonders why there are medical documents in here. She decides to investigate further. The company PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric), .
They were paying for people's houses, but meanwhile, there was many illnesses is the town. PG&E was paying for people's doctors visits, and the Doctor was actually being paid by PG&E to tell them they were fine. The town was told by PG&E that there was chromium in the water, but it is good, Chromium does do good things for the body, but PG&E did not mention to tell the people, that it was actually chromium 6, in their water. Chromium 6 his highly toxic, and carcinogenic. Erin started doing more and more research and starting talking to the Jenson family a family that PG&E offered to buy their house. .
Erin found out that PG&E was covering up that they had anything to do with the town's illness. Erin also believed that the cancer was linked to the water, so she went to the water records place in Hinkley and found that there was toxic well reports ordered dated back to 1967. .
Erin took her findings to her lawyer, Ed and stated that this company has made this town sick with cancer, and they need to sue PG&E. . It was up to her to make the company pay for what they have done. .
Ed decided to go to arbitration instead of a trial with a jury, mostly because they knew PG&E would just keep appealing for up to 10 years, and they would never get any money. They had 634 plaintiffs. .
Because she knew that appeals could last for ten years and then none of the families would get any money. There had to be a ninety-percent agreement for a suit to go to arbitration. She got the last 150 people to sign for a arbitration, and that was 634 signatures, and they had enough to finish the case.
