New Film, DARK WATERS, Mark Ruffalo: Chemical Waste, Corporate Corruption

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Mon Nov 25, 2019, 07:21 PM - Edit history (1)

Trailer. *Now in theaters. "Dark Waters," starring Mark Ruffalo as an attorney trying to punish the DuPont chemical corporation for dumping toxic waste in West Virginia, is a lone-crusader-against-the-corrupt-system film, in the tradition of "The Insider," "A Civil Action," and "The Verdict." Director Todd Haynes ('Carol,' 'Mildred Pierce') embraces that lineage, giving viewers the sense of what a long, tedious, spiritually draining process this can be. Ruffalo stars as Robert Billott, a Cincinnati, Ohio attorney for Taft Stettinius & Hollister, a firm that defends major corporations, including DuPont, one of the world's most powerful chemical manufacturers.

Through personal ties, and against the wishes of his own colleagues, Billott decides to help a lowly cattle farmer from Parkersburg, West Virginia named Wilbur Tennant (played by Bill Camp). Wilbur's cows have been getting sick, going insane, and dying off at an alarming rate, and he's convinced it's because DuPont poisoned the nearby water supply. He's right, of course, but proving it won't be easy, nor will establishing a chain of intentionality that might make DuPont liable for cleanup and restitution. What follows is a detective story with a nice guy lawyer at its center...
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dark-waters-movie-review-2019

*'The Atlantic' Review, A Chilling True Story of Corporate Indifference
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/11/dark-waters-review-mark-ruffalo-robert-bilott/602434/

*NYT Magazine, The Lawyer Who Became Dupont's Worst Nightmare, Jan. 2016,
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html

*TIME, The True Story of the Lawyer Who Took Dupont to Court and Won,
https://time.com/5737451/dark-waters-true-story-rob-bilott/

[dewsgirl]

1. I have wanted to see this, since August.

[appalachiablue]

2. Very interesting, the story, good cast & direction. Positive reviews.

Looking forward to seeing it soon.

[Uncle Joe]

3. Thanks for the heads-up appalachiablue.

I will have to check this one out.

[appalachiablue]

12. Very glad to see this expose film, UJ.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Taft Stettinius & Hollister, a firm that defends major corporations, including DuPont ...

Could there be .... A REPUBLICAN LINK ?? {reverb reverb reverb}

Taft traces its roots back to 1885, when Worthington & Strong was founded by Judge William Worthington and Edward W. Strong. John L. Stettinius and John B. Hollister joined the firm after its founding, at which point the firm became known as Worthington, Strong, Stettinius & Hollister. In January 1923, Judge Worthington died. In the following year, a young firm headed by Robert A. Taft and Charles P. Taft II, sons of former President William Howard Taft, joined the older firm to become Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP.[3]

In 1947, the firm's labor department, led by J. Mack Swigert, was instrumental in helping Robert Taft, who had become a United States Senator, draft and pass the groundbreaking Taft–Hartley Act that regulated labor unions.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft_Stettinius_%26_Hollister

[appalachiablue]

11. That's the firm, currently staffed with 400 lawyers. Their expansion

began in the 1980s according to Wiki, the very time things really went differently..

[Larissa]

5. The Lawyer who became DuPont's Worst Nightmare

From The New York Times Magazine, January 6, 2016

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html

[appalachiablue]

6. Thanks it's a well done, comprehensive article on a nightmare,

NYT, ‘‘We see a situation,’’ Joe Kiger says, ‘‘that has gone from Washington Works, to statewide, to the United States, and now it’s everywhere, it’s global. We’ve taken the cap off something here. But it’s just not DuPont. Good God. There are 60,000 unregulated chemicals out there right now. We have no idea what we’re taking.’’

Bilott doesn’t regret fighting DuPont for the last 16 years, nor for letting PFOA consume his career. But he is still angry. ‘‘The thought that DuPont could get away with this for this long,’’ Bilott says, his tone landing halfway between wonder and rage, ‘‘that they could keep making a profit off it, then get the agreement of the governmental agencies to slowly phase it out, only to replace it with an alternative with unknown human effects — we told the agencies about this in 2001, and they’ve essentially done nothing. That’s 14 years of this stuff continuing to be used, continuing to be in the drinking water all over the country. DuPont just quietly switches over to the next substance. And in the meantime, they fight everyone who has been injured by it.’’

[Dustlawyer]

7. I see this EVERY DAY because it is what I do.

These huge multi-national corporations do not care about anything but profits. I watched the national media stop reporting on the BP oil spill impacts to the Gulf Coast residents. If you are a big advertiser they let you do that!

I have been followed by private investigators who took pictures on me, my house, and my family trying to dig up dirt. They harassed the young lady for the length of her case against BP for killing her mom and dad (and 13 others) in their 2005 Texas City plant explosion (Ed Bradley’s last 60 Minutes episode).

They are planning a movie on this with talks of Mathew McConaughey playing my boss. Hopefully this movie gets made so everyone will see how they budgeted for the deaths they knew they would cause due to their unwillingness to spend the money to fix all of their known problems.

We also went after DuPont for killing 4 people in their Houston area plant. Once again cost cutting took precedent over safety.

The “Dustlawyer” screen name comes from my earlier work going after asbestos and silica companies for hiding the dangers for generations, killing millions of American workers. These big companies care about profit only and spend their lobbying money well. We have been attacked for “picking on these poor companies” and putting them out of business.

We must get the money out of politics and separate the advertising departments from the news departments in our media!

[erronis]

8. Bravo, Dustlawyer. Please keep up your good deeds.

[MontanaMama]

9. Thank you Dustlawyer.

I don’t know how many Montanans we’ve lost to asbestos poisoning in Libby, MT via the vermiculite mining company WR Grace. They’ve been closed down for decades and people are still dying.

[appalachiablue]

10. Many thanks to you & your colleagues for fighting corporate corruption.

The level of dangerous, unregulated chemicals in our environment is staggering. In the film, Dupont initially tried to attribute deaths of the farmer's cattle to 'poor animal husbandry,' but that didn't fly..I have friends and family in this area along the Ohio River and have heard about Dupont's reckless pollution for some time. Very glad to see the film.
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The lawyer in the film, Robert Billott who is portrayed by Mark Ruffalo spent more than a decade trying to expose Dupont for corporate malfeasance. A class action lawsuit was settled in 2017. The film project was aided by star and producer Mark Ruffalo, a longtime environmental activist against chemical pollution and fracking by Monsanto and other major corporations.

- TIME..PFAS chemicals are used in products ranging from waterproof jackets to shaving cream, and they can leach into water supplies in areas where they are disposed of or used in fire suppression (in particular on military bases, where they have been used for years). According to Bilott’s complaint, studies currently suggest that PFAS is present in the blood of around 99% of Americans.
The class of chemicals has broadly been linked to immune system disruption, while PFOA specifically has been found to be associated with cancers and other diseases. Bilott’s newest lawsuit, as with his prior cases, alleges that these companies knew for decades that PFAS chemicals, specifically PFOA, could be linked to serious health problems, and that they still assured the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other U.S. government regulators that PFAS exposures were harmless...https://time.com/5737451/dark-waters-true-story-rob-bilott/



- Actor/producer Mark Ruffalo with real life Ohio lawyer Rob Billet who Mark portrays in the new film, 'Dark Waters.'

- The Guardian.. Dark Waters, director Todd Haynes’s true-life account of corporate defense attorney turned environmental activist Robert Bilott’s (Mark Ruffalo) decade-plus struggle to expose DuPont Chemical Company. His expensive, exhaustive crusade grew from his discovery that DuPont was knowingly poisoning West Virginia’s water supply with toxic chemicals (specifically, PFAs, or per-and-polyfluoroalkyl), which resulted in the conglomerate settling a class-action lawsuit to the tune of $671m in 2017..

The project was brought to him by star and producer Ruffalo, a longtime environmental activist who has used the film’s publicity tour to speak at length about the catastrophic effects of chemical pollution caused by the likes of DuPont, Monsanto and other giant corporations. Dark Waters has been called routine by some, but it is also clearly a passion project for its makers, with Ruffalo and Haynes the latest in a long line of Hollywood heavyweights to tackle real life corporate maleficence in the hopes of shaping public discourse and effecting actual political change.

To that end, they’re already making some people nervous: a recent report from a Wall Street analyst who watched Dark Waters described a scenario wherein the film, should it prove a big enough hit with audiences, causes DuPont’s stock price to drop. Others have also suggested heightened scrutiny may make it difficult for the company to settle an ongoing lawsuit...https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/25/dark-waters-movie-dupont-company-toxic-chemicals