Erin Brockovich - 2000

Erin Brockovich is a 2000 biographical film directed by Steven Soderbergh. The film is a dramatization of the story of Erin Brockovich, played by Julia Roberts, who fought against the US West Coast energy corporation Pacific Gas and Electric Company. Roberts won the Academy Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors' Guild Award and BAFTA for Best Actress. The film itself was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director for Steven Soderbergh at the 73rd Academy Awards. It is based on a true story, and the real Erin Brockovich has a cameo appearance as a waitress named Julia.

Plot:-
In 1993, Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is an unemployed single mother of three children who, after losing a personal injury lawsuit against a doctor in a car accident she was in, asks her lawyer, Edward L. Masry (Albert Finney), if he can find her a job in compensation for the loss. Ed gives her work as a file clerk in his office, and she runs across some files on a pro bono case involving medical records in real-estate files and PG&E offering to purchase the home of Hinkley, California, resident Donna Jensen.

Erin begins digging into the particulars of the case, convinced that the facts simply do not add up, and persuades Ed to allow her further research. After investigation, she discovers a systematic cover-up of the industrial poisoning (hexavalent chromium) of the town of Hinkley's water supply that threatens the health of the entire community. She finds that PG&E is responsible for the extensive illnesses that the residents of Hinkley have been diagnosed with and fights to bring the company to justice.

Erin meets a mysterious man in a bar who claims that he was tasked with destroying documents at PG&E, but declined to do so after noticing the medical conditions plaguing the workers who worked in the unlined ponds. Erin discovers a 1966 document that ties a conversation of a corporate executive in the San Francisco PG&E headquarters to the Hinkley station that proved the corporate headquarters knew the water was contaminated and did not do anything about it and advised the Hinkley station to keep it a secret from the neighborhood. The evidence was examined by a judge without a jury and PG&E was ordered to pay a settlement amount of $333 million that was divided among the 648 plaintiffs.