Sad. Ed Masry, the crusading Southern California attorney whose law firm won the $333-million settlement against Pacific Gas and Electric for groundwater contamination in the high desert, and who was portrayed by Albert Finney in the movie "Erin Brockovich"
has died. He was 73.
"The lawyer sprang to national prominence when the 2000 motion picture chronicled his remarkable legal achievement along with that of his legal assistant, the real-life Erin Brockovich, portrayed by Julia Roberts. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards -- best picture, director (Steven Soderbergh), actor (Finney), actress and screenplay. Roberts won the Oscar for best actress. Masry and the real Brockovich watched her accept it at Oscar ceremonies at the Shrine Auditorium.
The brash New Jersey-born lawyer and the brassy twice-divorced mother who wangled a job as his file clerk and later became his legal assistant were a perfect match. Together they waged the class-action lawsuit on behalf of 648 residents of Hinkley, Calif., near Barstow, who claimed that PG&E tanks contaminated their water supply and caused them to get cancer and other illnesses."
Masry strikes me as the classic Southern California maverick, part hardboiled huckster (he began his career as an ambulance chaser, representing seedy and occasionally shady characters in and around LA), part hardboiled hero (he was a lifelong environmentalist, and started working on "toxic torts" in 1992). Even before his notoriety from the PG&E case and subsequent movie, his life intersected (in classic LA fashion) with the famous (Pamela Lee, various pro athletes), and the infamous (the televangelist Gene Scott and the cult leader Don Sperato). But Masry's story is a redemption song, not the stuff of film noir. He parlayed his fame and fortune not into infommercials peddling beeswax furniture polish and skin cream but into running for the Thousand Oaks City Council (north of LA) where he became a perennial pain in the ass to its mostly right-wing members, and continued to work on behalf of environmental causes.
I grew up on Masry's turf (in Thousand Oaks), and went to high school in the San Fernando Valley. I used to watch those city council meetings with my grandmother on TV (years before Masry was on the council). All my scrapes and falls as a kid made me quite familiar with the hospital where he died. It is nice to know that the same landscape that grows John Birch Society car dealers with secrets, macrobiotic Christian fundamentalists with nasty habits, and the largest Mormon temple west of Utah (our Mormon neighbors up the street lived in a giant Tudor house with an apocalypse-ready basement full of canned goods; apparently there was a shortage of canned goods in paradise) can also grow the likes of Ed Masry. RIP sir.
PS Calling someone a huckster isn't necessarily an insult in LA or environs.