The film I chose for this report is Erin Brockovich, based on a true story. The film is about a single mother of three who is looking for work. The beginning begins with Erin getting into a car accident and going to a lawyer, Ed Masry, to try to sue the man who hit her. She lost the case and, out of spite and desperation, pushed Mr. Masry to give her a job in his office. Erin Brockovich's job was to file cases. One day Mr. Masry asked her to open a real estate practice – pro bono. While doing so he noticed that the medical records of an immunotoxicology group were present in the estate archives. Curious, Erin received Mr. Masry's permission to investigate further. Erin met Donna and Peter Jensen and learned that they have both been in and out of the hospital for numerous cancers and neurological disorders. He found that PG&E had paid medical bills because of chromium in the water. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay A good portion of this movie revolves around Erin Brockovich running around and researching chromium and PG&E's involvement in it. He learns that PG&E used hexavalent chromium at 0.58 parts per million and that the legal limit is 0.05. PG&E had essentially deceived the people of Hinkley CA by telling them about chromium 3 and how good it was, when in reality they were using chromium 6. Erin and Ed Masry finally manage to get enough information and evidence (plus over 500 plaintiffs) to take on PG&E in court. They never had an actual trial, but instead binding arbitration. The judge ruled in favor of the Hinkley residents and ordered PG&E to pay them $333 million. Not many stages of the trial were depicted in the film because no actual trial occurred. However, some stages of the civil litigation process have been illustrated. It all started with the preliminary phase of the trial where a meeting takes place before the actual trial. These trials are intended to resolve problems and the judge decides whether the case will move forward and a trial will be acceptable. Then there were the informal negotiations. This is where lawyers from both sides met to try to address the issues at hand. In this movie, however, Erin was the only one speaking. There was no real negotiation going on. Personally I don't think this would happen in a true informal negotiation. Throughout these legal steps, PG&E has remained adamant and denied any knowledge of the presence of chromium in the water. No real trial took place. Ed Masry and his associates thought it would be better to have binding arbitration since a trial can drag on for years. Since there was no jury, the final say on the matter rested solely with the judge. While they never showed the actual arbitration, they mentioned that the plaintiffs won $333 million from PG&E. There were a lot of stages that weren't actually there, but you could still get an idea of ​​what happened and what the outcome was. The film never depicted the process of the defendant's response, but, as I said before, PG&E denied having any knowledge of what it was accused of. Even the preliminary investigations and the investigation phase were not presented in this film. I think a lot of those steps were left out because it is a movie after all. It had already lasted over 2 hours and any additional information and phases would have almost been too much. The process of a lawsuit is tedious and providing every little detail will only prolong the process..