Can I sue over Kincade Fire damages?

Yes, you can file a lawsuit if you suffered damages as a result of the Kincade Fire.

The Kincade Fire burned in Sonoma County, California from October 23, 2019 to November 6, 2019. It burned 77,758 acres of land, destroyed 374 buildings, caused around 190,000 evacuations and caused four non-fatal injuries.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said on July 16 that Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s (PG&E) power equipment started the Kincade fire, saying that PG&E transmission lines northeast of Geyserville started the fire.

PG&E’s lines had been the primary suspect before the announcement, since PG&E said in October 2019 that their transmission tower malfunctioned near the fire’s origin point at the time the fire began.

A lawsuit was filed in early July demonstrating the kinds of claims one can make in a Kincade Fire lawsuit. That lawsuit seeks damages for the causes of action of inverse condemnation, negligence, violations per public utilities code §2106, premises liability, trespass, public nuisance, private nuisance and violations of health and safety code §13007.

The lawsuit claims the defendants were negligent by, including but not limited to:

1. Not complying with professional, regulatory and/or statutory standards of care;

2. Not properly maintaining, inspecting, managing and/or monitoring power lines, equipment and/or adjacent vegetation in a timely manner;

3. Not making overhead lines safe;

4. Not conducting adequate, reasonably frequent, effective, proper or prompt inspections of lines, wires and equipment;

5. Not maintaining, monitoring, constructing and/or designing power lines in a way which avoids fire potential during the fire season;

6. Not installing, inspecting or repairing the equipment necessary to prevent power lines from sagging and/or making contact with other wires and starting fires;

7. Not keeping equipment in a safe condition and/or managing equipment to prevent fire;

8. Not de-energizing power lines during high fire risk conditions;

9. Not de-energizing power lines after the fire started, and/or

10. Not properly training and supervising agents and employees responsible for inspecting and maintaining power lines or vegetation near the lines.

The lawsuit notes that public utilities code §2106 “permits action by a person or entity who has suffered loss, damages, or injury caused by the acts of a public utility which does, causes to be done, or permits any act, matter or thing prohibited or declared unlawful, or which omits to do any act, matter, or thing required to be done, either by the Constitution, any law of this State, or any order or decision of the commission.”

This essentially means that you are entitled to file a lawsuit to recover for any loss, damage or injury caused by the public utility PG&E in the Kincade Fire.

The lawsuit seeks a variety of damages, including:

• Repair, replacement and/or depreciation of destroyed, damaged and/or lost personal and/or real property;

• Loss of the enjoyment, goodwill, benefit and use of real and/or personal property;

• Loss of business profits, earning capacity and/or wages, displacement and power shut off expenses and/or any economic losses;

• Any and all measure of damages, compensation or relief available based on the damages and injuries suffered by plaintiffs;

• Damages for injuries to timber, trees or underwood;

The lawsuit noted five examples of PG&E’s behavior demonstrating they contributed to the ignition of the Kincade Fire:

1. A Liberty Consulting Group report found that “several aspects of the PG&E distribution system present significant safety issues.” It found that “addressing risks associated with electrical distribution components has been overshadowed by electric transmission and gas facilities.”

2. The Liberty report recommended that “PG&E treat aging infrastructure as an enterprise-level risk.” PG&E began to publicly say they were doing this after the Liberty Report was released, but the methodology they used to evaluate that risk’s severity was unscientific and not based on valid statistical methodology.

3. A 2015 audit of the Sonoma Division of PG&E demonstrated that there were 3,527 work orders in the Kincade Fire’s area which were completed past the date of corrective action, demonstrating “a staggering disregard of the safety to the people who eventually found themselves in the path of the Kincade Fire.”

A California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) order noted, “poorly maintained poles and attachments have caused substantial property damage and repeated loss of life in this state.”

4. PG&E’s tendency to ignore necessary maintenance in the name of profit was noted by a 2013 filing by the Office of Ratepayer Advocates with the CPUC. “PG&E engaged in a ‘run to failure’ strategy whereby it deferred needed maintenance… to increase its profits,” the filing read.

5. PG&E purchased insurance policies “from offshore companies in Bermuda, London, and elsewhere that expressly provide coverage for punitive damages in amounts that exceed hundreds of millions of dollars… providing corporate security at the cost of public safety,” encouraging “a culture of reckless disregard for the safety of the residents of Northern and Central California and contributed to the cause of the Kincade Fire.”

About the author

Jeffrey Nadrich is the managing partner of Nadrich & Cohen, LLP, a California wildfire and personal injury law firm. For more information on Kincade Fire lawsuits, visit https://www.personalinjurylawcal.com/kincade-fire-lawsuits/