She’s already conquered a major power company and Hollywood – now, Erin Brockovich is taking on the Big Apple’s top asbestos concerns.
Brockovich, 48, has entered into an exclusive consulting agreement with the New York law firm of Weitz & Luxenberg – which specializes in asbestos-exposure lawsuits – and will be involved in bringing the firm cases, investigating claims and helping them take on polluters.
“I’m hands-on and they’re hands on, so it will be a team effort,” Brockovich told The Post. “I’m very excited.”
She’s not their only high-profile help – state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is famously “of counsel” at the firm, and has come under fire for blocking tort reform in New York while refusing to disclose how much he is paid or the nature of the work.
The firm had done work with Brockovich in the past, and “decided to expand the relationship into something more permanent and exclusive,” said lawyer Arthur Luxenberg.
A former Miss Pacific Coast, Brockovich was a single mom working as a law firm’s file clerk when she began researching the health problems afflicting the residents of Hinkley, Calif. The work was instrumental to her firm’s class-action suit against Pacific Gas and Electric and subsequent $333 million settlement.
In the smash 2000 movie “Erin Brockovich,” Julia Roberts won an Oscar playing her.
Brockovich said the movie was a life-changer for her – within three months of its release, she’d received “100,000 e-mails about different communities with health concerns who needed help.”
Brockovich, who now heads her own consulting company, has been doing work for a California law firm and plans to be bicoastal. “You’ll see me in New York a lot,” she said.
“It weighs heavily on me when I don’t have an answer and way to help people,” which is why she partnered with Weitz & Luxenberg, a large firm that specializes in toxic tort cases. She’s also appearing in TV ads for the firm.