Word: brockoviches
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...Masry and Brockovich are pressing on, still aglow from their legal and financial triumph celebrated in the movie. That victory has gone largely unchallenged, except by columnist and author Michael Fumento who, as early as 2000, documented some of the firm's questionable tactics. The suit, on behalf of Hinkley, California residents, focused on an ionized form of chromium called chromium-6, a rust inhibitor that was carelessly dumped by the giant utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, and seeped into the groundwater used by the town's residents. In bringing suit against PG&E, Brockovich's law firm charged that chromium...
Further undermining Brockovich's charges, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, responsible for testing and ensuring air quality in the region, has reported that, "To date, monitoring at the high school area has not shown readings of benzene, hexane and other air toxic levels that are considered abnormal." A private testing company, hired by the oil company currently operating the wells, reached the same conclusion. And the Brockovich firm has not provided any evidence of a valid epidemiological study - which it does not have the expertise to conduct - to support its charges that rates of cancer and other illnesses...
...Beverly Hills cancer scare erupted in February, after Brockovich's firm alerted the local CBS-TV affiliate that she'd soon be filing suit. The resulting two-part TV series caused widespread concern, if not panic, among Beverly Hills high school students, parents and graduates. Six hundred people attended a meeting hosted by Brockovich at the posh Beverly Hills Hotel to recruit potential litigants, who were asked to fill out questionnaires to document their illnesses. Armed with these data, Brockovich charged that emissions of benzene, toluene n-hexane and other substances on the high school campus have caused 300 cases...
...also doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this is junk science. School officials dispute the numbers Brockovich is throwing about. They say 216 claims have been filed against the school district, and only 94 of them involve cancers. And what about those specific cancers - Hodgkin's Lymphoma, non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and thyroid cancer - listed in the initial suit filed against the oil companies by the Brockovich firm? As the University of Southern California medical school's Cancer Surveillance Program flatly states, "Known causes of these cancers are not petroleum or petroleum products...
Critic Fumento hasn't let up. In a column syndicated by Scripps Howard last March, he took a penetrating look at the Beverly Hills furor. "Can you believe a California high school has suffered a shark attack?" he began. "How so? These sharks wear suits. Their names: paralegal Erin Brockovich and Attorney Ed Masry...