Marquez rushed back to his office. He asked his tech-support employees to grant him access to Eson's and Wineland's e-mails. What he found exceeded even his most paranoid fears. There, before his eyes, was an actual unreleased press release announcing Eson as the new CEO. In one conspiratorial note after another, he found that Eson had been talking behind his back with, of all people, Jesse Neyman of Enron. In one e-mail, Eson suggested that Neyman stall on an offer by Venoco to repurchase Enron's stock so that the two could discuss the offer and "make this work to our mutual advantage." What exactly did this mean? Marquez saw in it a plot to get the Enron guys on the Venoco board so that they could turn the company over to Eson. Which is precisely what happened.
The next day, Marquez fired both Eson and Wineland. But they countered quickly, convincing Enron to back them. As a group, Eson, Wineland, and Enron represented 68% of Venoco's shares, and they quickly took control of the board, installing both Enron officials and Eson's wife. It all went to court, and on June 6, 2002, a state court held Eson and Wineland in breach of their fiduciary duties to Venoco. Specifically, the judge found that through his e-mail communication with Neyman, Eson had disclosed information to aid Enron in its negotiations to sell its shares in exchange for gaining Enron's support to oust Marquez. But because the Enron officials had not gotten involved in anything beyond obtaining the board representation they were entitled to, the court found that the company had not been harmed. Not only were no damages awarded, the judge ruled that Marquez's termination of Eson and Wineland could not stand. Twenty-four days later, on June 30, 2002, the board of directors--now including the Enron guys and Eson's wife--voted to terminate O'Donnell and Marquez.
Rod Eson became Venoco's CEO. Tim Marquez filed a lawsuit.
Marquez saw a plot office and demanded to see Eson's e-mails. What he found exceeded even his most paranoid fears.
It Doesn't Take a Rocket Scientist
And then Erin Brockovich showed up. On a clear Wednesday evening last March, under the art nouveau ceilings and massive Italian chandeliers of the Beverly Hills Hotel, more than 600 people gathered for a performance. The Los Angeles personal-injury law firm of Masry & Vititoe, where Erin Brockovich works as "director of research," had rented one of the hotel's ballrooms to address a group of Beverly Hills High School alumni, students, parents, teachers, and neighbors. The goal: to convince potential plaintiffs that the oil operation on the school's campus was giving them cancer and that the city, the school, and the oil companies, including Venoco, were to blame.
As the guests shuffled in, some seeing each other for the first time in years (none of the most famous alums--Angelina Jolie, Nicolas Cage, Lenny Kravitz, or Monica Lewinsky--made an appearance), Brockovich and a small platoon of lawyers worked the room, handing out business cards and making small talk. A striking 5-foot-9-inch blonde in high heels and a low-cut black suit, Brockovich swooped into conversations, comforting victims, pleading her case to the reporters on hand, and offering concise, provocative sound bites to the TV cameras she'd invited.
"This is not a publicity stunt," Brockovich told the parents, teachers, and students. "This is not about another movie to be made."
When Brockovich first walked onstage there was a collective gasp. No doubt, many present had seen Erin Brockovich, the movie version of her successful attempt to hold Pacific Gas and Electric responsible for polluting the drinking water of Hinkley, Calif. Weeks before, Brockovich had told a Variety columnist that the film rights for the Beverly Hills case were "up for grabs." But she later said the comment had been made in jest, and now onstage, she felt obligated to announce, "This is not a publicity stunt. This is not about another movie to be made."
Brockovich began with the story of Lori Moss, a 1992 Beverly Hills High graduate who was diagnosed in 1996 with Hodgkin's lymphoma and in 1998 with thyroid cancer. Moss had waited for three hours at a Brockovich book signing (Take It From Me: Life's a Struggle But You Can Win) to tell the author about her own harrowing experience. Inspired by their encounter, Moss went searching for other young alumni who had fallen ill. She found them--two, three, then 20 and more, all desperate to know why. At that point, Brockovich says, she started sleuthing, too.
What she found, she told her audience, was a big-time oil operation. Pumping 740 barrels of oil and 330,000 cubic feet of natural gas a day, Venoco's 18 active wells were bringing the school system and the city a combined $700,000 a year in royalties. It was, Brockovich suggested, a cash cow that no one wanted to lose--regardless of the danger. The most damning piece of evidence was air testing Brockovich's team had obtained by sneaking onto the high school football field in the middle of the night--in front of KCBS news cameras. "When the test results came back," she said, walking the stage with the force of righteous indignation, "we were surprised to see that the benzene levels at the Beverly Hills High School athletic field were five times higher than the results we got at the corner of the 405 Freeway and Santa Monica Boulevard."
