PG&E responds to lawsuits over damage from October wildfires

In its first response to a bevy of lawsuits by survivors of the October wildfires, PG&E on Friday challenged the legal basis for the claims and asserted multiple defenses while acknowledging that the cause of the wildfires has not been determined.

Eight separate filings by the embattled utility’s lawyers were submitted to the San Francisco Superior Court, where cases arising from fires in Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino, Lake, Solano and Yuba counties have been coordinated for pretrial proceedings.

If the survivors’ legal arguments are upheld in court, there could be “grave consequences for the economic health of privately owned utilities such as PG&E,” possibly leading to “delivery interruptions and job losses that affect Californians more broadly and have ripple effects throughout the state economy,” one filing said.

The lawsuits generally accuse PG&E of poor power line maintenance and failing to prepare for high winds, causing blazes that burned nearly a quarter-million acres, destroyed 9,000 homes and killed 44 people, causing $9 billion in damage in the North Bay.

PG&E’s battery of seven attorneys and three law firms asserted the fires were the result of a “confluence of unprecedented weather events,” including drought, heavy rains and record summer heat and a “high wind event” on Oct. 8 and 9.

The survivors are claiming, PG&E said, the utility should be held liable for billions of dollars in property damages even though those events “were beyond any foreseeable or preventable scope and regardless of whether PG&E ever is found to have acted negligently.”

Delving into deep legalese, the utility asserted that PG&E could not be ordered to provide compensation for damaged property because it has no ability to raise its rates to recover those costs.

“This would ultimately harm all of our customers and the future of our state,” PG&E spokesman Paul Doherty said in a statement. “It’s the wrong approach.”

Noreen Evans, a Santa Rosa attorney whose firm is representing more than 1,000 fire survivors, called PG&E’s response “one of the crassest displays of corporate indifference I’ve ever seen.”

“Let’s be clear about what PG&E is trying to,” she said in an email. “PG&E wants to increase your utility bill to pay for burning down your home.”

Among the defenses offered in the filings, PG&E said that “other persons or entities,” including one or more of the survivors, may share negligence or “be otherwise at fault, in whole or in part” for the damage.

“It’s utterly outrageous,” Evans said. “What PG&E is saying is the victims of the fire caused their own harm.”

The proceedings in San Francisco have no direct bearing on who is responsible for the fire, Evans said.

“We are arguing about law,” she said.

Once pretrial issues are resolved, the individual lawsuits could be sent back to the counties where they were initially filed, the San Francisco judge said in January. Doherty, the PG&E spokesman, said the losses of life and property are “heartbreaking.”

Weather conditions have “become more extreme,” he said, “and our solutions to wildfires must evolve with them.”

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@guykovner.