SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) - Plaintiffs lawyers representing victims of the 2019 Kincade Fire in California are getting closer to settling their lawsuits against Pacific Gas & Electric.
The sides reported on Oct. 6 that they have made "substantial progress in settling cases" and asked that the scheduled Nov. 7 start of trial be vacated. Judge Andrew Cheng approved the request on Oct. 11.
The fire started in Sonoma County in October 2019 at a facility that PG&E had not used in 13 years, though the company kept it energized with 230,000 volts of electricity. A jumper cable on a transmission line broke and "rained sparks down on the dry brush below" as it bumped against a steel tower, plaintiffs say.
The fire lasted two weeks, causing evacuations throughout Sonoma County and destroying 374 buildings.
Litigation from personal injury firms on behalf of individual plaintiffs was turned into a mass action in San Francisco Superior Court. Recently, they have been defending their request for punitive damages from PG&E, which has gone through bankruptcy to compensate victims of other wildfires around California.
"PG&E knew that it is unsafe to keep electrical lines energized during high fire danger
events—that’s the whole idea behind their Public Safety Shutoff Program," plaintiff attorneys at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy wrote on Sept. 9.
"They were also aware that keeping idle facilities energized—any idle facility—posed an acute fire risk."
PG&E moved in July for summary adjudication on the issue of punitive damages, arguing the plaintiffs couldn't clear a "heavy burden" or show the company engaged in despicable conduct.
"PG&E devoted extensive resources to inspecting and maintaining transmission towers like Tower 001/006, including implementing an industry-leading inspection program designed to identify potential points of failure on transmission equipment," attorneys for the company wrote.
"PG&E conducted multiple state-of-the-art inspections of Tower 001/006 in the months before the Kincade Fire; these inspections generated detailed photographs reviewed by experienced personnel trained to watch of conductor breaks and potential failures.
"None of these inspections flagged the jumpers as in any way problematic."
The plaintiffs obviously disagreed, arguing the company has known for years that it shouldn't leave idle facilities energized and that it considered managing idle lines "low priority work."
"PG&E wants this court to focus on the configuration of the jumper cable that failed and caused the Kincade Fire. They claim that since the jumper was regularly inspected prior to th fire, there is nothing more that they could have done to prevent the fire," plaintiffs attorneys wrote.
"They are wrong. They could have de-energized the jumper, along with the last three spans of the No. 9 line. Their faiure to do so creates a triable issue of material fact sufficient to justify denying their motion."