MIKE MUNRO: Julia Roberts had no doubt when she played Erin Brockovich, in the film Erin Brockovich, it was as a bold and brassy single mum who, as the pitch went, "Brought a corporation to its knees and a town to its feet." Julia got an Oscar. Erin became famous as the sassy streetfighter who uncovered one of America's worst cancer scandals. Now Erin's at it again — a new case, a class action set in the heart of Tinseltown. And it has all the makings of a blockbuster — cover-up, mysterious deaths and all at Beverley Hills High School. If she's right, Erin Brockovich could bring the city to its knees but, if she's wrong, Hollywood could destroy her.

STORY

MIKE MUNRO: This is a tale of deadly intrigue set in the glamorous heart of Beverley Hills. A story of big oil and dirty secrets. It's the latest blockbuster, starring America's feisty environmental crusader, Erin Brockovich. Five years ago, Erin Brockovich was immortalised by Julia Roberts. The movie tells how a single mother uncovers a deadly pollution scandal in a Californian town called Hinkley. A toxic chemical called chromium 6 was leaking from a power plant into the locals' drinking water. A scandal resulted in one of the largest compensation payouts in legal history — $330 million. The film made Erin Brockovich famous. The case made her wealthy. And now she's at it again. In the middle of Hollywood, Beverley Hills High is America's most famous school. Sitting right next to it, the villain of the piece, an oil refinery pumping out 500 barrels of crude every day. And, according to Erin Brockovich, it's also producing a toxic plume of benzine gas. She claims that, over the years, it's left hundreds of students with cancer and continues to kill today.

ERIN BROCKOVICH: Yes, there have been deaths. We've lost I think three students this past year.

MIKE MUNRO: And you're convinced that the oil well at Beverley Hills High has caused these cancers?

ERIN BROCKOVICH: I believe … I don't think it's a coincidence.

MIKE MUNRO: Predominantly what cancers are they suffering from?

ERIN BROCKOVICH: Well, there's a couple of categories. There's a large number of Hodgkin's diseases, a large number of non-Hodgkin's diseases, a large number of thyroid cancers and testicular cancers in the boys. I take very seriously what I do and I take very seriously...

MIKE MUNRO: Blonde and charismatic, Erin Brockovich has come a long way from her days as a teenage beauty queen. Charming and street smart, she knows she's now a very tall poppy.

ERIN BROCKOVICH: There was thousands and thousands of e-mails when this first broke towards me. It's like, 'Oh, you know, I'm sick of Erin Brockovich' and 'stop wearing your bustiers' and 'quit trying to dress like you're 18! You look 55!' And I was, 'Wow!' I was like, 'Really?' This isn't what this is about.

MIKE MUNRO: But Erin Brockovich's credibility is well and truly on the line in the Beverley Hills High case. Hollywood made her name and now it's out to destroy it. Today there are plenty of critics lining up to recast Erin Brockovich not as a crusader, but a mercenary.

MICHAEL FUMENTO: Erin Brockovich is no representative of the little people. She is no champion for humanity or for the environment.

MIKE MUNRO: Michael Fumento is Erin Brockovich's number one foe.

MICHAEL FUMENTO: And she hates my guts.

MIKE MUNRO: And little wonder. Fumento, a lawyer and journalist, has tracked her career since the movie came out and now calls Brockovich a fraud.

MICHAEL FUMENTO: She has two motivators — she loves the publicity and she loves the money and that is why I call her a shark. Erin Brockovich smells blood at Beverley Hills. She will take a person who originally thought that they were perfectly healthy and she'll convince them, A, you are sick, and, B, it is connected to what I'm telling you it's connected to.

MIKE MUNRO: So what do you say to Michael Fumento...

ERIN BROCKOVICH: Oh, my God!

MIKE MUNRO: … who says really you're only interested in money and fame, that you're a shark circling for another big payout?

ERIN BROCKOVICH: You know, that's his opinion because that's not who I am. That's not what I'm about. That's not what I'm trying to do.

MIKE MUNRO: This is Hinkley, where Erin Brockovich made her name as an eco-warrior. Today it's little more than a ghost town. Now, no-one disputes that drinking water here was polluted and the company Pacific Gas and Electric was forced to pay a hefty price for trying to cover that up. But what is in dispute is whether that polluted water caused cancers and caused people to die.

ERIN BROCKOVICH: People in Hinkley didn't just drink the water. They used it to bathe, they used it to shower, they swam in it. Kids ran through sprinklers laced in chromium 6.

MIKE MUNRO: But there was still no cancer cluster.

ERIN BROCKOVICH: We had cancers.

MIKE MUNRO: Authorities argue that there was no more cancer rates in Hinkley than anywhere else in Los Angeles.

ERIN BROCKOVICH: Then Hinkley for me wasn't about a cancer cluster. It was about a corporation who dumped a chemical in the ground water that was a poison and they covered it up and people got sick.

MICHAEL FUMENTO: There were some true facts in the movie. For example, there is an Erin Brockovich, there is a state of California, there is a town in that state called Hinkley. But for the most part, the movie was fiction.

MIKE MUNRO: But what about all the people dying of cancer because they were being poisoned by chromium 6 in their drinking water?

MICHAEL FUMENTO: The State of California conducted an investigation strictly of cancer in the town of Hinkley and it found they actually had a slightly lower rate of cancer than would be expected among a group of people that size, that skin colour, that age and so on.

MIKE MUNRO: Erin Brockovich earned $2 million from the Hinkley case and secured a lucrative new career — tracking down corporate polluters and making them pay. And now at Beverley Hills High, Brockovich and her boss/lawyer Ed Masry think they've hit the jackpot again.

ED MASRY: Certainly, the damages to the clients in Beverley Hills far surpass anything in Hinkley, far surpass.

MIKE MUNRO: So you could be talking about $500 million?

ED MASRY: Could be.

MIKE MUNRO: So, from your point of view, this could be a huge public health disaster?

ERIN BROCKOVICH: It could be. And, from my point of view, it could be opening up Pandora's box.

MIKE MUNRO: It's a stellar case with potentially an all-star cast. Children of the rich and famous go here. Former students include Nicolas Cage, Carrie Fisher, Alicia Silverstone, David Schwimmer. They haven't joined the class action, but over 900 have, including sports lawyer Todd Davis.

TODD DAVIS: I would hope that they've cleaned it up enough that there's no further risk and I think how could they put students like these or myself at risk for money?

MIKE MUNRO: Davis believes the benzine gas from the refinery caused the testicular cancer that almost killed him.

TODD DAVIS: I have massive scars. I'm scarred from here straight to here and then they took another 2.5 pound tumour out of this side of my stomach. And I'm split from here literally down to my groin and they also took a small piece about this big out of the back of my oesophagus, which is why I'm split literally continuing from under my arm to the middle of my spine.

MIKE MUNRO: Lucky to be alive?

TODD DAVIS: I'm very lucky to be alive.

MIKE MUNRO: Doctor, you're a parent.

DR WENDY COZEN: Yes, I am.

MIKE MUNRO: Would you send your children to Beverley Hills High School?

DR WENDY COZEN: Absolutely.

MIKE MUNRO: Without a second's doubt?

DR WENDY COZEN: Without a second thought.

MIKE MUNRO: In California, every cancer case is reported to a state registry. Dr Wendy Cozen runs the Los Angeles office and says, just as in Hinkley, there is no cancer cluster at Beverley Hills High.

DR WENDY COZEN: I have no reason to believe that the presence of the oil well on the campus would be contributing to any excessive cancer.

MIKE MUNRO: So why do you think all this hysteria is being caused?

DR WENDY COZEN: You said the right word — hysteria. People are really frightened about cancer. They look around at the environment, they find the first factory or...

MIKE MUNRO: Oil well?

DR WENDY COZEN: … oil well down the block and say, 'That's the reason.'

MIKE MUNRO: Los Angeles is a city literally built on oil. In fact, there are hundreds of schools close to oil wells and refineries all around the city and, despite all the differing views from experts on both sides, California's major air quality agency has tested the air right here at the school on a number of occasions and found all pollution levels to be well below state guidelines. But ask Erin Brockovich, and you get a very different view.

ERIN BROCKOVICH: Not everything is, you know, this and this science. We're human beings. Commonsense plays a role in science, it really does. And I'm going to get beat up on Beverley Hills High. I see that coming and I'll take my shots. I'm going to hold my ground.

MIKE MUNRO: Erin Brockovich's defiance isn't in question, but her credibility now is, especially after she made the stunning claim that the air at the school was five times as toxic as the freeways nearby but then refused to hand over her air samples to the state authorities.

ERIN BROCKOVICH: That aggravates the hell out of me. We never did that. And as soon as we had the first data that showed us there was releases in the air, we immediately went to CBS News, immediately to put the story out there.

MIKE MUNRO: But not to state health authorities?

ERIN BROCKOVICH: We haven't gone to … the state health authorities know now.

MIKE MUNRO: Let me be the devil's advocate.

ERIN BROCKOVICH: Please don't.

MIKE MUNRO: But after you did hand them over to authorities, they now say, clearly, there is no evidence at all.

ERIN BROCKOVICH: That's to be seen and this is exactly what I've faced on Hinkley.

ED MASRY: We don't file frivolous law suits. We just don't do it. The cost, for example, in Hinkley, just the cheques written to experts, were $10 million. I would assume that Beverley Hills would be at least that or more.

MIKE MUNRO: But what is $10 million if you're going to get a $500 million payout?

ED MASRY: I don't know. Would you put $10 million on black at the roulette table? It's pretty risky.

MIKE MUNRO: The Beverley Hills High case is set to go to trial later this year and the stakes are massive. Erin Brockovich is risking her golden reputation by taking on the town that made her famous. There's already talk of another movie, but the ending might be very different this time around.

MICHAEL FUMENTO: The only other thing in the world that could possibly match her desire for fame is her desire for fortune, and there's a lot of money in Beverley Hills and they themselves are claiming that they're going to get more out of this than they got out of the Hinkley case. Watch my words — if these guys go to trial, they will lose.

ERIN BROCKOVICH: I'm sorry they think it's about money. That isn't what I'm trying to do. If I'm making some money off of creating awareness and informing others and helping find the truth, then I'm okay with that.

MIKE MUNRO: Erin Brockovich, thank you very much.

ERIN BROCKOVICH: You're welcome.