NICKNAMED Erin Brockovich, he's the British lawyer who takes on the Goliaths of corporate Britain – and wins.
Sitting in his unflashy Watford office, wearing blue jeans and an open neck shirt, Des Collins is as far from a Savile Row-suited expensive London brief as you can get.
But the 76-year-old solicitor has won some of the biggest cases against the odds for those who had no voice.
Des’s fight for justice for a group of mothers and their children who were born with birth defects is being told in the hit Netflix drama Toxic Town.
He won £14.6million and an apology for the mums from Corby, Northants, after they were poisoned by a toxic dust when the town’s steel works were demolished in the late 1980s and 90s.
It was the first case in the world to rule that air pollution could harm babies in the womb.
After the Corby victory, Des received a pat on the back from the real Erin Brockovich.
American lawyer Erin took on an energy company that had poisoned water in California and, against the odds, won a massive payout for the victims.
Erin, whose story became a Hollywood film starring Julia Roberts, told Des after his win: “I know the relief the mothers will feel on at last receiving proper recognition of the trauma they’ve been caused.
“For 11 years these families have been wanting answers. It just shows that when you know you have right on your side you get the strength to fight on for as long as it takes.”
But the Corby mums’ victory is just one of many cases Des has won for the little people against big businesses and mighty governments.
In an exclusive interview with The Sun, he says: “There was no grand plan. We developed a reputation as a home for cases that no-one else will touch.”
Des's long campaign on behalf of the Corby poisoning victims began way back in 1999.
He had been lighting the fire with a newspaper when he spotted an article about a cluster of children born with birth defects following the demolition of the town’s 70-year-old steelworks.
Reading it, he realised he had to act and so started his 11-year fight for justice for the families.
Meeting with mum Susan McIntyre, played by Doctor Who’s Jodie Whittaker, and her son Connor, who had been born with no fingers on his left hand, Des knew he had to take on the case.
Susan, 56, says she went with Des because at their first meeting he got down on the carpet and played with three-year-old Connor.
Des had also worked in Corby steel works for a summer job while at university and he knew the area.
He says: “Susan was complete salt of the earth, she called a spade a spade.
“We were talking and her son, who was just little at the time, was fascinated by my briefcase. He was lovely. The truth is, I take on legal cases other people won’t do.”
In Des, Corby Council found its nemesis.
He says: “Corby was a nightmare largely because the response from the council was ‘you say this has happened. Well, you tell us which truck, carrying which load on which day affected which mother.’
“We couldn't do that. We were never going to be able to define it with that certainty.
“We were scratching our heads one day when I came into the office and on my desk in a brown envelope was a lever arch file full of papers.”
“It isn’t normal for secret documents to turn up - it is like something out of a John Grisham novel. You think people write this stuff and I quite like reading it, but it doesn’t happen in real life - but it did happen.”
The papers contained hundreds of documents from a whistleblower which proved that Corby Borough Council had cut corners.
Des says: “The wheels of justice ground on very slowly and all the while the babies born with upper limb deformities grew older and the much-needed financial redress was ever more elusive.
“It was a very painful drawn-out process for the families. Susan’s son was three when we started and 15 when it was finally resolved.
“The longer it went on, in the families’ minds the less likely we were to win. They began to wonder whether it could ever be brought home. I always knew we would get it to a trial.
“If we would win that trial we didn’t know. Once you go into court it's 50-50. It is how the judge likes it.”
IN the late ’80s and ’90s, Corby, Northamptonshire, earned the grim nickname “Toxic Town” after a horrifying scandal that left families shattered.
Between 1989 and 1999, a shocking 19 babies were born with severe limb deformities, a rate alarmingly higher than the national average.
Toxic waste was mishandled during the clean-up of the town’s former steelworks site.
From 1984 to 1999, Corby Borough Council embarked on a massive reclamation project, transporting hazardous materials through populated areas in open lorries.
This reckless operation blanketed the town in a dangerous red dust, exposing unsuspecting residents to harmful chemicals.
Brave mothers, like Susan McIntyre and Tracey Taylor, spearheaded a relentless fight for justice.
Their determination culminated in a landmark 2009 High Court ruling, where the council was found negligent, leading to a £14.6 million settlement for the affected families.
The scandal’s legacy continues to haunt Corby. Recent reports highlight the enduring struggles of victims like India Harrison, born with multiple deformities and chronic pain.
Her story, among others, is now spotlighted in Netflix’s gripping drama “Toxic Town,” bringing renewed attention to this dark chapter in British history.
The council spent ten weeks saying they had disposed of the waste properly, instead of admitting mistakes were made, and were not responsible for the birth defects.
But Des’ legal team’s expert destroyed their evidence in court, showing how they had processed it incorrectly.
When the council finally backed down and settled out of court the mums were ecstatic.
With a huge amount of cheek, the council stipulated that not only could Des not reveal the amount of compensation awarded or ever sue them again.
Corby was a nightmare largely because the response from the council was ‘you say this has happened. Well, you tell us which truck, carrying which load on which day affected which mother.’
Des Collins
But council records revealed it spent over £14 million in damages and legal costs.
He says: “We were euphoric. It is probably the best case I’ve ever had. It was so great for the mothers to be finally justified.”
While Erin Brockovich was played on screen by superstar Julia Roberts, Des is portrayed in Toxic Town by Rory Kinnear, who starred as entrepreneur David Fishwick in Bank of Dave.
Des says: “I think he has got me right. It is a great performance,”
The Brit lawyer's extraordinary career is worth a Hollywood movie of its own.
His mother wanted him to be a doctor but young Des, who lived near Corby as a boy, loved watching fictional lawyer Perry Mason on TV.
So he trained as a lawyer instead and practised in the City of London but he desperately wanted to work for real people rather than big businesses.
So, he relocated to down-at-heel Watford Junction and his first major case literally came crashing into his lap.
In August 1996 a train travelling from London Euston smashed into the station across the road from his new office.
One person was killed and 69 were injured in the crash that shocked Britain.
Des says: “If the train had got any closer, it would have come through the office.”
In the first group litigation of its kind in the country, he represented the victims and their families and won compensation from the train operator.
He went on to represent passengers caught up in the 1997 Southall rail disaster where six passengers were killed and 150 injured when a passenger express collided with a freight train.
Two years later, he got compensation for the families of 31 victims killed in the crash near London’s Paddington station when a Great Western express hit a local Thames service head-on. Another 285 passengers were injured.
Des also fought the airline industry all the way to the House of Lords on behalf of families of victims who had died of deep vein thrombosis.
And in 2005 he represented more than 250 families affected by the Buncefield fuel depot explosion near Hemel Hempstead.
He says: “I lived so close to Buncefield that when the explosion happened, my windows blew open.”
On the day before we meet, a 170-page document had landed in Des's inbox, which he has to forensically analyse for his latest case – fighting the Government in the infected blood scandal.
He has been back at the High Court representing the families of pupils at Treloars, a boarding school for disabled children who were used as human guinea pigs with contaminated blood from America.
Children with haemophilia ended up contracting HIV and hepatitis C because of the trials in the early 1980s. Many died.
Des says: “I was thinking about retiring in 2017, then the infected blood case came up.
“It is nearly ten years later and I can’t retire now. I have too much work to do.
“I take my work home with me emotionally. But I try to problem solve it.
“I will wake at three in the morning with an element of a case on my mind and will get up and try and solve it.
“The anger I have is directed towards the people who won’t see that they have got it wrong and have got to give in.
“We all get things wrong. But once it’s pointed out to you that you have got it so f**king wrong why don’t you just give in and settle.
“That really annoys me.”
Toxic Town is on Netflix now.
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