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Music Review
Sharps & Flats
The vision of a Valkyrian dominatrix, Ute Lemper steps into a smoky cabaret with songs by Tom Waits, Kurt Weill, Nick Cave and Elvis Costello.
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[04/14/00]

Movie Review
"Where the Money Is"
Credit aging bank robber Paul Newman for almost saving this merely diverting little heist comedy.
By Charles Taylor
[04/14/00]

Movie Review
"American Psycho"
Mary Harron's clinically ironic take on the infamous Bret Easton Ellis novel tastefully avoids showing murderous violence -- and making a point.
By Stephanie Zacharek
[04/14/00]

Music Review
Sharps & Flats
From "Ha!" to "Hallelujah," the Rev. Al Green's gospel hits held onto the earthly sound of sweet salvation.
By Andy Battaglia
[04/13/00]

Column
Oh, Susannah!
Susannah Grant on writing star roles for Drew Barrymore ("Ever After"), Julia Roberts ("Erin Brockovich") and Sandra Bullock ("28 Days").
By Michael Sragow
[04/13/00]

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Other scientific studies, however, from contaminated spots in China, Scotland and the United States, have failed to find cancer-causing properties in waterborne chromium 6. A toxicologist at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Sharon Wilbur, says that chromium 6 in water doesn't harm humans. "It's very unlikely that people could die from drinking chromium 6 in the water, even over time," she said. Because the arbitration that eventually decided the case was closed to the public, it's unclear what sort of proof plaintiffs attorneys offered to support their claims.

By the spring of 1993, Masry had collected 47 clients. The signed retainers specified that he would collect 40 percent of any award. Masry filed a suit, claiming PG&E had discharged toxic wastewater into the area. PG&E responded by saying the complaint didn't state sufficient facts or other legal grounds to support its claims. But the case moved forward in San Bernardino County Superior Court.

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At this point, Masry brought in some big guns: Thomas Girardi of Girardi & Keese in Los Angeles, and Walter Lack of Engstrom, Lipscomb & Lack in Century City. Lack's firm specializes in insurance bad faith and toxic torts; Girardi is one of the state's best-connected and most powerful attorneys. The Wilshire Boulevard attorneys had the resources to wage what became a 650-plaintiff case, and they, too, asked clients for 40 percent of any award, plus costs. The plaintiffs agreed. "It was 'Either play our game or forget about it,'" said resident Nola Wetterman. The plaintiffs played.

Girardi and Lack were known for having sued a slew of companies on behalf of 624 present and former Lockheed aerospace workers. In that case Girardi argued that a number of alleged carcinogens found in materials used at Lockheed's Burbank, Calif., plant had caused his mostly elderly clients to suffer from cancer, memory loss and other ailments. Girardi broke the suit into dozens of cases -- each with ex-workers grouped by length of employment, type of ailments and other factors. In 1994, the groups started winning increasingly larger awards until the fifth case went before a Los Angeles Superior Court judge in August 1998. That's when judge and jury awarded 38 former workers $785 million -- more than $20 million each.

That jaw-dropping victory catapulted Girardi and Lack into the big leagues of California litigators. Less noticed has been the fate of those awards. As early as 1992, Lockheed had dropped out of the case and paid $33 million to the plaintiffs' attorney as a settlement; in the following years, other companies had settled as well. In 1998, a few clients began protesting that they had not gotten their money, which prompted them to complain to the California State Bar. The Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (CALA) also asked then-Gov. Pete Wilson, Attorney General Dan Lungren and others to look into the matter, according to a press release CALA issued Sept. 2, 1998.

But CALA never received a response from the State Bar, said spokeswoman Robin Lossing. According to bar spokesman Bill Davis, all such matters are confidential until, and unless, disciplinary action is taken. At the time, the bar had suffered deep funding cuts and is now addressing a backlog of approximately 5,000 such complaints. In a newspaper article written at the time, Girardi contended that the money had been held up on appeal; the attorney did not respond to repeated requests to be interviewed.

Meanwhile, all of the Lockheed cases have been appealed; the first verdict for $1.7 million remained intact, while portions of two other verdicts were overturned. The fourth, containing the second-largest amount of $21 million, has been completely reversed. Legal observers think it's quite possible that the fifth case -- the one with the record-breaking $785 million award -- will also be reversed.

But when Girardi and Lack joined the PG&E case in 1994, the utility didn't put up much of a fight. "We screwed up," by not cleaning the area sooner, PG&E spokesman Gregg Pruett acknowledged in a local paper at the time.

The case started in open court in front of Judge LeRoy Simmons. But before too long, Simmons retired. (Ironically, in view of later events, he became a private arbitrator and landed a paying part in the movie playing his former self, a sitting judge.) On Aug. 5, 1994, Girardi wrote to the residents of Hinkley, explaining that it could be five more years before the case could be assigned a trial date in open court. So, on the advice of Girardi and the other attorneys, the residents agreed to voluntary arbitration. PG&E, wary of facing an unsympathetic jury and an attorney with a reputation as a skilled courtroom litigator, agreed as well.

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Arbitration is billed as a cheap, quick and private way to resolve civil disputes. The practice gained momentum in the 1980s, when judges, bowing to pressure to alleviate overcrowded courtrooms, began encouraging litigants to resolve their disputes voluntarily. Since then, arbitration has snowballed into an unlicensed industry that's conservatively estimated at $350 million in annual sales, according to a spokeswoman at the nonprofit American Arbitration Association.

Not everyone thinks it's a good idea. In 1981 the late Rose Bird, then chief justice of the California Supreme Court, called private judging a "long step backward," because it "allows those who can afford it to play by different rules" by permitting rich litigants to leapfrog past others who must wait their turn for a hearing. Eight years later, then-Chief Justice Malcolm Lucas appointed a study of the trend, which ultimately supported the practice but urged that arbitration files be kept in courthouses where the public and press could freely inspect them. That recommendation was never acted upon.

The trouble with civil arbitrations such as the Hinkley case is that public-welfare issues can in effect be decided secretly between corporations and high-powered plaintiffs' attorneys who represent unsophisticated victims. In the wake of the PG&E litigation, for example, there is no public record of whether an enormous, publicly held utility did or did not poison a town.

"We hear a lot of complaints about these cases," said Gerald Uelman, professor of law at the University of Santa Clara. The for-profit arbitration business is booming, especially in California, he added. "It's upsetting to the extent that it's a resource used by institutional litigants."

"This is a troubling trend, especially when it concerns the public domain of toxic tort cases," said Erwin Chemerinksy, professor of legal ethics at the University of Southern California. "It means there's decreased public awareness of what's going on in the public domain."

Next page | As arbitrators, judges can double or triple their salaries