The Pelican Brief

Grantham travels to New York. Following Darby’s instructions, he takes a hotel room under a false name. Darby calls and tells him to go to another room where she is waiting. There, she updates him on her journey from New Orleans to New York. Darby feels as though she can trust Grantham.

A battle for control over the Louisiana coastline has raged “for centuries” (230). The marshlands are a miracle of nature, home to a huge variety of plants and animals. In 1930, oil was discovered in these wetlands, so oil companies sought to turn the beautiful natural landscape into a wasteland. In 1979, an oil company owned by Victor Mattiece discovered a huge reservoir of oil. Mattiece slowly and carefully bought up all the land in the area, spending big on politicians and bureaucrats to ensure unlimited access to the oilfield and its fortune. Backers in the Middle East funded his operations, hoping to make billions of dollars. However, the obscure environmental group known as the Green Fund filed a lawsuit to stop dredging and drilling. Mattiece spent a fortune on lawyers to win the lawsuit, telling his legal team to “do whatever it took […] break any rule, violate any ethic, hire any expert, commission any study, cut any throat, spend any amount of money” (234).