California judge filed lawsuit against LADWP, saying utilities failed to respond to fire
Two federal judges who lost their home in Pacific Palisade in January’s fire have joined hundreds of neighbors in suing the Los Angeles Department of Water and Electricity, claiming the utility failed to properly prepare for the wildfire and responded to the outbreak.
U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson, currently in the Central California Court of California, and Vijay “Jay” Gandhi, who once served as district judge in the same court, filed a lawsuit with his family last week.
The lawsuit filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court, saying the Palisades fire was “caused by LADWP’s water and electricity assets, especially empty reservoirs and fully charged power lines.”
The lawsuit quoted reports from The New York Times that found the Sana Ynez reservoir in LADWP, located in Palisades, was empty during the firefight and closed repairs a few months ago.
“Although the National Weather Service has severely warned of the ‘specially dangerous red flag warning’, the “critical fire weather” has the potential for rapid fires and extreme fire behavior, the LADWP is not ready for the fire in Palisade,” the complaint said.
LADWP hired a request for comment from Munger, Tolles & Olson, a Los Angeles law firm responsible for handling Palisades fire lawsuits. LADWP’s latest statement on pending lawsuits said the plaintiffs are expected to continue to join such lawsuits, but it dismissed claims that utility providers are not prepared and can be held responsible for the fire.
“While our staff and systems have been prepared for what might constitute the system, no urban water supply system is designed to fight against the massive, wind-driven wildfires of the speed and scale that the historically devastating Palisades fires have been presented,” the statement said.
The utility also said: “Laws and precedents of long-term settlement can prevent hydropower stations and their interest rate payers from liable for wildfire losses.”
The current and former federal judge filed a lawsuit in any official capacity, disagreeing with the country’s defense. One of the judges served as mediator in a previous fire settlement between Pacific gas and electric motors and residents.
“The city has to stand up and take responsibility and be responsible and do the right thing by the residents of Palisade. That’s why I joined the fight,” Gandhi, who served as a mediator, said in an interview with the Los Angeles Daily. He called the Palisades fire a “well-known but overlooked risk. The city needs to acknowledge that because it can’t happen again.”
According to Alexander Robertson, one of the lawyers in the case, the judge’s lawsuit has recently merged with other similar cases filed by more than 750 other residents. The lengthy list of cases against utilities continues to pile up as homeowners seek compensation for damages they believe were caused by poor management of water or power lines by the utility.
Images of the civil lawsuit filed against DWP show views of broken beams, insulators and power cords.
(California Superior Court)
The lawsuit also claims that most LADWP power lines remain vibrant during the fires, “During the forecasted Santa Ana Wind, other ignitions and fires in the Pacific Palisade,… [which] “It accelerated the rapid spread of the Palisade fire,” the complaint said.
LADWP knows that wildfires caused huge wildfires decades before the Palisadez fires caused infrastructure management, delayed repairs, unsafe equipment and/or aging infrastructure. “It calls nearby reservoirs and wire public essentials,” it said, “The failure of a critical infrastructure could have a domino effect. ”
