SAN BRUNO -- (Published July 12, 2011)﻿

Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which issued a public apology last month for September's natural gas explosion in San Bruno, says in a new court filing that it should not have to make payouts to victims who have sued the company because the blast was caused by third-party damage to a "state of the art" pipeline.

The company also indicated it would seek to assign some of the blame for the losses from the explosion to residents themselves.

PG&E has offered unsolicited cash payments to residents of the neighborhood devastated in the Sept. 9 explosion, which killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes. Last month, the company bought full-page newspaper ads headlined, "We Apologize," and noted that federal metallurgists looking into the cause of the explosion have said the pipe ruptured at a faulty weld.

However, in a filing in San Mateo County Superior Court last Tuesday in response to more than 100 lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in damages, PG&E's lawyers took a more combative stance. The company said it should not be held liable for the disaster because "unforeseeable, intervening and/or superseding acts of persons or entities" other than PG&E caused the blast.

The filing is not specific, but the only known activity around the pipeline was a 2008 sewer-replacement project that San Bruno commissioned.

The city and the private contractor that performed the work, D'Arcy and Harty Construction of San Francisco, say they took steps to ensure that the work - which involved breaking up old sewer pipe and replacing it with a plastic line - did not damage the PG&E transmission pipe.

Aside from its court filing, PG&E has said nothing publicly about the sewer work. It had an inspector at the job site who approved the construction plans, but he wasn't there while the work was performed.

Pointing the finger

However, in May, an industry trade group - which PG&E joined after the blast - said the sewer project had probably weakened the pipe and told federal investigators they should consider tests to account for the possibility.

Last month, an expert hired by a state-appointed panel also suggested that the sewer work had probably played a role in the explosion. But the expert, Robert Nickell, later backed away from that finding, telling The Chronicle that fluctuations in gas pressure over the years could have damaged the already flawed weld that eventually failed.

In its court filing, PG&E also said the blast victims themselves "may have been legally responsible under a doctrine of comparative negligence (or) contributory negligence" - factors that assign a portion of blame to a plaintiff.

PG&E's filing did not specify how residents might have been negligent, or how that negligence contributed to the fireball that consumed their homes.

Company spokeswoman Brittany Chord said Monday that the filing was "a standard part of the legal process," and that the company would "continue to move forward and work to resolve the claims of all parties as quickly as possible."

City surprised

San Bruno City Manager Connie Jackson said PG&E's court filing was "completely surprising." She added, "It's unfortunate that they have thrown everything plus the kitchen sink in this, to cover their legal strategy."

Michael Danko, an attorney who represents 40 blast victims, said PG&E officials "know no bounds."

"I can forgive them for saying third party - you can forgive that," Danko said. "But you cannot forgive them at all for blaming the victims."

He added, "They had time to figure this out and decide whether they really wanted to blame the victims who lost their homes or were burned. After thinking about it for nine months, they said the answer was yes."

Already paid?

PG&E also suggested the payments that the company has already made to some residents meant their lawsuits were invalidated "in whole or in part." The firm made cash payouts of $15,000 to $50,000 after the blast, on a scale that depended on the extent of damage, but said at the time that the payments had no bearing on civil damages.

PG&E's filing also downplayed claims in the lawsuits that the company was running a shoddy pipeline system. The company said its transmission pipes, including the one that exploded, were "consistent with available technological, scientific and industrial state of the art and in compliance with applicable regulation."

To read more of the Chronicle's San Bruno explosion coverage, click here