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A woman in a leather skirt

A leather skirt is a skirt made of leather. Although durable material, the particular combination of style and material makes for a certain fashion statement. Leather skirts appear in a variety of lengths and styles.

Fashion[link]

Use varies with current trends in fashion, eg. during the 80s and 90s they were a popular item on the catwalks with popularity dwindling in the early 2000s^{[citation needed]}.

Suitability[link]

A short leather skirt might be regarded as more sexy than an equivalent short skirt of other material, and thus as more suitable to a night out than as office wear. A long leather skirt might look professional and chic without looking too sexy for the office.

Subculture[link]

Leather garments, including skirts, see use in heavy metal, goth and BDSM subcultures.

Gender[link]

Like other skirts in western culture they are almost exclusively worn by women, but there are movements, such as MIS that fight for making them acceptable for everyday wear by men.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Leather Skirts

See also[link]

• Leather
• Leather fetishism
• Gothic fashion

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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: Erin Brockovich's involvement in the Hinkley groundwater contamination case is not adequately described. Please help improve this article if you can; the talk page may contain suggestions. (May 2012)

Erin Brockovich
Brockovich in 2007
Born	(1960-06-22) June 22, 1960 (age 52) Lawrence, Kansas, United States
Occupation	President, Brockovich Research & Consulting[1]
Spouse	Shawn Brown (m. 1982–1987) «start: (1982)–end+1: (1988)»"Marriage: Shawn Brown to Erin Brockovich" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Erin_Brockovich) Steven Brockovich (m. 1989–1990) «start: (1989)–end+1: (1991)»"Marriage: Steven Brockovich to Erin Brockovich" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Erin_Brockovich) Eric L. Ellis (1999-present)

Erin Brockovich-Ellis (born June 22, 1960) is an American legal clerk and environmental activist who, despite the lack of a formal law school education, or any legal education, was instrumental in constructing a case against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) of California in 1993. Since the release of the film that shares her story and name, she has hosted Challenge America with Erin Brockovich on ABC and Final Justice on Zone Reality. She is the president of Brockovich Research & Consulting, a consulting firm. She is currently working as a consultant for Girardi & Keese,^[2][3] the New York law firm Weitz & Luxenberg,^[4] which has a focus on personal injury claims for asbestos exposure, and Shine Lawyers in Australia.^[5]

Early life[link]

She was born Erin Pattee in Lawrence, Kansas, to Frank Pattee, an industrial engineer and Betty Jo O'Neal-Pattee, a journalist. She attended Lawrence High School then Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, and graduated with an Associate in Applied Arts Degree from Wades Business College in Dallas, Texas. She worked as a management trainee for Kmart in 1981 but quit after a few months and entered a beauty pageant. After winning Miss Pacific Coast in 1981, she gave up pageant life. She has lived in California since 1982.

Pacific Gas and Electric litigation[link]

The case alleged contamination of drinking water with hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium(VI), in the southern California town of Hinkley. At the center of the case was a facility called the Hinkley Compressor Station, part of a natural gas pipeline connecting to the San Francisco Bay Area and constructed in 1952. Between 1952 and 1966, PG&E used hexavalent chromium to fight corrosion in the cooling tower. The wastewater dissolved the hexavalent chromium from the cooling towers and was discharged to unlined ponds at the site. Some of the wastewater percolated into the groundwater, affecting an area near the plant approximately 2 by 1 miles (3.2 by 1.6 km).^[6] The case was settled in 1996 for US$333 million, the largest settlement ever paid in a direct action lawsuit in US history.^{[citation needed]}

A study released in 2010 by the California Cancer Registry showed that cancer rates in Hinkley "remained unremarkable from 1988 to 2008."^[7] An epidemiologist involved in the study said that "the 196 cases of cancer reported during the most recent survey of 1996 through 2008 were less than what he would expect based on demographics and the regional rate of cancer."^[7]

Average Cr-6 levels in Hinkley were recorded as 1.19ppb with a peak of 3.09ppb. The PG&E Topock Compressor Station averaged 7.8ppb and peaks at 31.8ppb based on the PG&E Background Study.^[8] California's Public Health Goal (PHG), circa 2011, for hexavalent chromium is 0.02ppb.^[9]

Other litigation[link]

Working with Thousand Oaks, California-based lawyer Edward L. Masry, Brockovich went on to participate in other anti-pollution lawsuits. One accuses Whitman Corporation of chromium contamination in Willits, California. Another lawsuit, which lists 1,200 plaintiffs, alleges contamination near PG&E's Kettleman Hills Compressor Station in Kings County, California, along the same pipeline as the Hinkley site. The Kettleman suit settled for $335 million in 2006. After experiencing problems with mold contamination in her own home in the Conejo Valley, Brockovich became a prominent activist and educator in this area as well.

Brockovich and Masry filed suit against the Beverly Hills Unified School District in 2003, in which the district was accused of harming the health and safety of its students by allowing a contractor to operate a cluster of oil wells on campus.^[10] Brockovich and Masry alleged that 300 cancer cases were linked to the oil wells. Subsequent testing and epidemiological investigation failed to corroborate substantial link, and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Wendell Mortimer granted summary judgment against the plaintiffs.^[11] In May 2007, the School District announced that it was to be paid $450,000 as reimbursement for legal expenses.^[12]

Brockovich assisted in the filing of a lawsuit against Prime Tanning Corp. of St. Joseph, Missouri in April 2009. The lawsuit claims that waste sludge from the production of leather, containing high levels of hexavalent chromium, was distributed to farmers in northwest Missouri to use as fertilizer on their fields. It is believed to be a potential cause of an abnormally high number of brain tumors (70 since 1996) around the town of Cameron, Missouri, which is currently being investigated by the EPA.^[13]

In June 2009, Brockovich began investigating a case of contaminated water in Midland, Texas.^[14] "Significant amounts" of hexavalent chromium were found in the water of more than 40 homes in the area, some of which have now been fitted with state-monitored filters on their water supply.^[14] Brockovich said "The only difference between here and Hinkley, is that I saw higher levels here than I saw in Hinkley."^[14]

Awards[link]

• Honorary Doctor of Laws, and Commencement Speaker at Lewis and Clark Law School, Portland in May 2005^[15]
• Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, and Commencement Speaker at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles on May 5, 2007^[15]
• Honorary Master of Arts, Business Communication from Jones International University^[15]

Movies[link]

Brockovich's work in bringing litigation against Pacific Gas and Electric is the focus of the 2000 feature film, Erin Brockovich, starring Julia Roberts in the title role. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Writing in a Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. Roberts won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Erin Brockovich. Erin Brockovich herself had a cameo role as a waitress named Julia R.

Brockovich has a more extensive role in the 2012 documentary Last Call at the Oasis, which focuses not only on water pollution but also on the overall state of water scarcity as it relates to water policy in the United States.^[16]

Book[link]

Brockovich's book, entitled Take It From Me: Life's a Struggle But You Can Win, was published in October 2001, and was on the NYT Business Bestseller's List.^[17]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Site of Erin Brockovich
• The Brockovich Report - BrockovichBlog.com
• Brockovich I-Village
• Official MySpace of Erin Brockovich
• Erin Brockovich biography on the Biography Channel
• Erin Brockovich at the Internet Movie Database
• Evening with Erin Brockovich in Sydney, hosted by the Climate Change Coalition 2007
• Detail about Hinkley case at AwesomeStories.com
• Did Hinkley Residents Really Win? at salon.com
• Weitz & Luxenberg PC