New Lawsuit May Upstage 'Brockovich'.

The real-life legal sequel to "Erin Brockovich" has quietly been sitting in a docket file for rive years and is finally scheduled to play out in Los Angeles Superior Court this summer, with twice as many defendants and the potential for an award surpassing the record $333 million won against Pacific Gas & Electric in the original 1996 case chronicled in last year's hit movie.

"Judging from the past precedent, this could be the mother and father of all awards," said Jefferey Sellers, an environmental law professor at USC. "As long as there are more people who are hurt, the damages will inevitably climb and the claim for compensation will rise."

As many as 1,100 current and former residents of the far-flung, inland California towns of Kettleman Hills, Hinkley and Topock, their heirs and some former employees of PG&E plants in those towns are seeking as much as $500 million in damages for illnesses and deaths allegedly caused by the discharge of the carcinogenic chromium 6 into drinking water supplies from 1952 through 1985, court documents and plaintiffs' attorneys said.

Approximately 15 percent of the alleged victims have died from cancer, kidney failure and other diseases related to the rust inhibitor while another 5 percent are terminally ill, plaintiffs' attorneys said.

The pending suit has escaped media attention because it was filed four years before last year's hit movie, "Erin Brockovich," was released, said co-lead plaintiff attorney Ed Masry, who was portrayed by Albert Finney in the hit film.

"Nobody was hiding it," said Masry of the current suit. "There was no romance to it, I guess. Frankly, the news media wasn't that interested in the $333 million settlement. It wasn't until the movie came out that the gigantic press (coverage) began. It's that simple."

The latest cast of "Brockovich" plaintiffs joined the current suit, which was initially filed in 1996, after watching a 1995 documentary on ABC's "Primetime," which followed the tenacious investigation into PG&E's discharging practices by Brockovich, then a down-on-her-luck legal secretary and single mother.

Among the hundreds of calls to Masry's office were dozens of people who had moved out of Hinkley as far back as the late 1960s and had no idea that the illness they and other family members had suffered was connected to the plant, according to the suit.

PG&E problems

That PG&E is among the utilities currently negotiating a combined $10 billion bailout plan with the state - the San Francisco-based company claims to have lost nearly $6 billion in the past year buying wholesale electricity - does not phase attorneys a bit.

They said the companies, which were prohibited from raising rates to match operating costs under the crumbling deregulation plan, will ultimately regain financial solvency when they are allowed to increase bills to consumers.

"They will survive just as they've always survived in the past 100 years - the public will support a public utilities monopoly," said plaintiff attorney Walter Lack, adding that PG&E had shareholders' equity of $40 billion as recently as two years ago. "The rates will be raised. (PG&E) will be required to buy long-term (power contracts). And it will be back to normal."

Lack, who returns to his role as co-lead counsel along with Tom Girardi and Brockovich's boss, Masry, said PG&E does not have liability insurance to cover settlements and verdicts involving negligence.

PG&E spokesman Jon Tremayne said that the plaintiffs can expect a hard-fought battle when the trial begins July 2.

"We will certainly present a spirited and vigorous defense," he said. "Obviously we dispute those allegations. And there are different components in the case that is going to trial in July, as opposed to the original suit and the Dolan suit."

Bakersfield attorney Michael Patrick Dolan filed a suit against PG&E on behalf of 109 people seeking unspecified damages based on similar allegations. They were not part of 1996's $333-million settlement. While the Dolan suit has received some publicity, including a prominent article in The Los Angeles Times last week, the much larger case coming to trial in July has largely escaped public notice and comes at a precarious time for PG&E.

"I don't have any comment on the timing," said Tremayne, referring to the flood of litigation coming as PG&E teeters on the verge of bankruptcy. "Our team is certainly working very hard to avoid (bankruptcy). In order to get California out of this energy crisis, we need to be financially viable so we can be part of the solution."

Lack said that several of Dolan' s clients initially approached him and Girardi but were not allowed to join their suit because their illnesses could not be traced to chromium 6.

Cause disputed

Ernest Getto, PG&E's lead defense attorney in the case, said, "The evidence in the case is going to show that no one was harmed by chromium in the water supply. That's kind of the bottom line.

"I don't think any of these cases has any merit," added Getto, who did not represent PG&E in the first case. "But they will continue until they are resolved one way or the other."

Neither Tremayne nor Getto would discuss the prospects of reaching another settlement to avoid trial.

But Lack said that PG&E won't even discuss the possibility with his side.

"They indicated to the court that they want a jury trial," said Lack. "And by God, we're going to give them one."

About 70 former and current residents and workers from Hinkley - most now living out of state - became plaintiffs in a third suit filed last October by Team Brockovich after seeing "Erin Brockovich."

Their drinking wells and swimming pools were contaminated by water cascading over chromium 6-lined pipes to cool down the natural gas flowing through and into the generators, the suit states. The water would then be discharged into unlined wells, eventually seeping into the groundwater supply, the suit states.

"Prior to 'Erin Brockovich,' people didn't know anything about chromium 6," said Girardi. "Now virtually everybody knows how devastating chromium 6 can be."

Brockovich said that she began investigating alleged contamination from the Kettleman plant in 1995 as she was gathering evidence for the second round of Hinkley plaintiffs.

She said she found a smoking-gun document in the Fresno Regional Water Quality Control Board files: a 1964 letter from the U.S. Department of Interior warning PG&E officials that chromium 6 had been discovered in the Kettleman wells.

She said that the company's housing complex sat within 25 yards of the plant's discharge wells, cooling towers and company swimming pool.

"It had been sitting there for 30 years," said Brockovich, of the letter. "Nothing was ever done. I am today dumbfounded by both these agencies. My first document (pertaining) to Kettleman established that PG&E Corp. in San Francisco knew there was a chromium 6 problem in Kettleman. I didn't have that link in Hinkley at first."