California judges file suit against LADWP, saying utility failed to respond to fire

Two federal judges who lost their Pacific Palisades homes in the January firestorm have joined hundreds of their neighbors in suing the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, claiming the utility failed to properly prepare for the wildfire and respond when it broke out.

U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson, who currently sits on the Central District of California’s court, and Vijay “Jay” Gandhi, who served as a magistrate judge in the same court, filed the lawsuit last week along with their families.

The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that the Palisades conflagration “was caused by both LADWP’s water and power assets, specifically empty reservoirs and energized powerlines.”

The lawsuit cites reporting from The Times that found LADWP’s Sana Ynez Reservoir, located in the Palisades, sat empty during the firefight, having been closed months prior for repairs.

“Despite dire warnings by the National Weather Service of a ‘Particularly Dangerous Condition-Red Flag Warning,’ of ‘critical fire weather’ which had the potential for rapid fire spread and extreme fire behavior, the LADWP was unprepared for the Palisades fire,” the complaint said.

A request for comment from L.A.-based law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, which was hired by LADWP to handle Palisades fire litigation, was not immediately answered. LADWP’s most recent statement about pending litigation said it expects plaintiffs to continue to join such lawsuits, but it dismissed claims that the utility provider wasn’t prepared and could be held responsible for the fire.

“While our crews and system were prepared for situations that might strain the system, no urban water system is designed to combat a massive, wind-driven wildfire of the speed and scale presented by the historically destructive Palisades Fire,” the statement said, an explanation that several experts have backed up.

The utility also said that “long settled law and precedent prevent water utilities, and their rate payers, from being liable for wildfire losses.”

The current and former federal judges who filed the suit as residents, not in any official capacity, disagree with that line of defense. One of the judges worked as a mediator in prior fire settlements between Pacific Gas & Electric and residents.

“The city must stand up and claim responsibility and do right by the residents of the Palisades. And that’s why I joined this battle,” Gandhi, who worked as the mediator, said in an interview with the Los Angeles Daily News. He called the Palisades fire a “manifestation of risks that were widely known but ignored. And the city needs to acknowledge that, because it can’t happen again.”

The judges’ lawsuit was recently consolidated with more than 10 other similar cases against LADWP, brought by more than 750 other residents, according to one of the attorneys working on the cases, Alexander Robertson. The long list of cases against the utility continue to pile up as homeowners seek compensation for damage they believe was caused by the utility’s mismanagement of water resources or its power lines.

An image from a civil lawsuit filed against the DWP shows a view of the broken cross-arms, insulators and power lines.

(Superior Court of Calif.)

The suit also alleges that most of LADWP power lines remained energized during the fire, causing “additional ignitions and fires in Pacific Palisades during a predicted Santa Ana wind event, … [which] accelerated the rapid spread of the Palisades Fire,” the complaint says.

LADWP “knew about the significant risk wildfires posed in the event of ineffective infrastructure management, delayed repairs, unsafe equipment, and/or aging infrastructure decades before the Palisades Fire,” the complaint said. It called the nearby reservoirs and electric lines public necessities, saying that “failure of one critical infrastructure can potentially have a domino effect.”