Diagnosis Links A Local Woman To A Beverly Hills Cancer Cluster

By Kaaren Valenta

When Jillian Lippman got an email three years ago from someone who found her name on the Internet at Classmates.com, she didn’t think much about it, at least not at first.

“He asked if I have, or have ever had, any type of cancer [because] they found that my high school — Beverly Hills High in Beverly Hills, Calif. — was finding more and more students who graduated from the school coming down with cancer, especially thyroid cancer,” she said.

Ms Lippman, who moved to Newtown in 1984, emailed him back that she was diagnosed with a goiter in 1976 when she still lived in California, and had been on medication for the thyroid problem ever since.

She didn’t think much more about the email until last July, when she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

“I remembered the email,” she said. “He had told me that there was a big lawsuit filed by none other than Erin Brockovich, who was popularized in the eponymous film, and attorney Edward Masry. The school has two oil wells on the property, pumping oil 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They found out that the toxins and gases that these wells were putting out were causing these cancers.”

Most people associate Beverly Hills as the glamorous home of many Hollywood celebrities, but the city was founded on oil. At the turn of the 20th Century, this city of the rich and famous looked more like a Texas oil field than the California city it is today. Then many of the wells went dry, and the stars moved in.

Beverly Hills High School is the alma mater for scores of Hollywood celebrities, and their children, and was the inspiration for the teen series Beverly Hills 90210. But during the past few years the school has been embroiled in a toxic-cancer-cluster scare that prompted the real life Erin Brockovich to file a class-action lawsuit.

Brockovich, an investigator with Masry’s law firm, rose to prominence when she put together a landmark 1996 water pollution case that won the residents of the small desert town of Hinkley a $333 million settlement from Pacific Gas and Electric Company. The story of that case was told in the movie Erin Brockovich, which earned Julia Roberts a best actress Oscar.

The fact that there are oil wells on the Beverly Hills High School property was not hidden. A 165-foot oil derrick is covered with brightly colored panels of soundproofing material painted with flowers by children as part of a therapeutic arts program.

According to published news reports, the school district collects more than $225,000 a year in royalties from 18 active wells, which produce about 450 barrels of oil and 400,000 cubic feet of natural gas a day. When Erin Brockovich raised concerns about the about the hazard of potential releases of benzene, methane, and n-hexane gases from the wells at the high school, the reaction was swift.

Venoco, the company that operates the wells at the high school, shut them down after air quality testing found a faulty piece of equipment that could cause increased releases of benzene. Venoco agreed to pay a $10,000 fine and install $60,000 worth of monitoring equipment.

Meanwhile, the inspectors from the South Coast Air Quality Management District and engineers hired by the school district conducted their own studies and said they found no elevated cancer risk on the 2,100-student campus. School officials refuse to discuss the topic further because it is in litigation.

Jillian Lippman lived in Beverly Hills because her parents were in show business. Her late father, Harry Morton, managed and was a booking agent for most of the top comedians of the 40s, 50s, and 60s including Jan Murray, George Burns, Milton Berle, Danny Thomas, Martha Raye, Henny Youngman, Nipsy Russell, and Alan King. Her late mother, Billie Lorraine, was a singer with some of the legendary big bands of the 1940s and an actress who worked in such musical comedies as That Certain Girl.

“There was no one my parents didn’t know,” Ms Lippman said. “I had an interesting childhood. I’d come home from school and find Sammy Davis Jr in my living room. Jerry Lewis was at my wedding.”

One of her best friends, who was a teacher and the daughter of Jan Murray, had fixed her up on a blind date in 1971 with Gary Lippman, a teacher who, like Ms Lippman, originally lived in New York.

“I was born in Brooklyn and had lived on Long Island,” she said. “Gary’s father had been superintendent of the Bay Ridge Post Office on Long Island. After we got married and had two children, we decided to move back East. It took five years to find our house in Newtown, but when we saw it, we fell in love with the house and the flagpole. We didn’t know anyone here at the time and my husband didn’t even have a job. ”

Their daughter Sonnie was 4 years old at the time. Kimberly was 9. Kimberly now is married and teaches school in Manchester. Sonnie worked at My Place restaurant for years and now is a manager at DiPalma’s restaurant in Southbury, which, like My Place, is owned by members of the Tambascio family. Gary Lippman left teaching for a new career as a financial planner.

Jillian Lippman had started thyroid treatment before she left California.

A Cancer Diagnosis

“After I had Kimberly 29 years ago, I couldn’t lose weight so I was referred to an endocrinologist who said I had a goiter and put me on thyroid medicine,” Ms Lippman said. “I was seeing a doctor at Yale who eventually retired, so when I needed to get a new prescription last year — because the company making the medicine was going out of business — I went to another endocrinologist, Beatrice Olson. I was getting a prescription from the nurse practitioner when Dr Olson walked by and commented on my handbag. We started talking and she told me she wanted me to have an ultrasound, and afterwards she ordered a biopsy.

“I got a phone call the following week and learned that I had second stage cancer.”

Ms Lippman said she was told that there are three types of thyroid cancer, and “luckily I got the one that grows slowest — it can take up to 30 years to manifest itself.”

“I had four and a half hours of surgery that involved all of my vocal cords,” she said. “That was on August 24. I had just buried my father in June; my mother died three years ago.”

Because the cancer had not spread, Ms Lippman said she did not need chemotherapy or radiation. “I just had to take a kind of nuclear radioactive pill that killed any leftover cancer cells,” she said. “And I had to go for two body scans. But I got off lucky.”

She recalled the email, however, so she started searching for more information on the Internet.

“I found lots to read on the lawsuit that is filed against the town of Beverly Hills, the school district, and several oil companies,” she said. “I contacted Mr Masry’s office; they referred me to a law firm, Baron & Budd, in Dallas, Texas, that is taking on any new plaintiffs. So far [between the two firms] there are 800 plaintiffs. To be included, I had to file within six months of my diagnosis.”

Last November 4 she got a call from the Dallas law firm. “They said they will represent me on my case,” she said. “The trial will be held this July in Los Angeles. This is not a class action suit; it is all individuals. Twelve plaintiffs were picked for this toxic tort.”

After lawsuits were filed by Erin Brockovich and Ed Masry in 2003 in Beverly Hills, critics called their allegations “junk science.” They said the law firm’s own testing did not show significantly elevated levels of pollutants, that the cancer cluster could be just a coincidence, and that the types of cancers reported — Hodgkin’s lymphoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and thyroid cancer — cannot be linked to petroleum or petroleum products.

But Jillian Lippman is not convinced.

“You can’t tell me that so many people have come down with the same kind of cancer and it isn’t related,” she said. “Among my friends from the high school, four of us were on thyroid medication. I think oil companies should be held accountable. It’s not the money. Getting a cancer diagnosis is very devastating.”

Everyone is worried about what is in the air and water, she said.

“It’s the story of today,” she said. “Where we live, work, and play should be safe.”