First trial in 2017 fire suits against PG&E to focus on Napa County blaze

Nov. 16--The opening clash in a titanic legal battle over whether PG&E should pay for the damage caused by the October 2017 firestorm in the North Bay will start with the Atlas fire in Napa County, which burned nearly 52,000 acres, destroyed 783 structures and killed six people.

Set to begin in September 2019, the trial will provide the first venue for people who lost property or loved ones in the North Bay fires to bring evidence against PG&E before a jury and argue the utility giant failed to maintain its equipment or prepare for high winds predicted days in advance.

The trial will be a central stage for PG&E, whose maintenance record and safety measures have come under heavy scrutiny in California, where the latest record-breaking inferno, the Camp fire in Butte County, has destroyed more than 10,000 homes and businesses and claimed at least 63 lives.

The utility is under heavy financial pressure amid speculation its equipment may have sparked the Camp fire. It has already been sued by people who lost homes in the blaze.

PG&E faces liabilities exceeding $15 billion in the 2017 fires. Its representatives have staked out a public defense that last year's hot, dry weather conditions were beyond the utility's control, and that increasingly destructive fires in the state are reflective of a dangerous new era ushered in by climate change.

Attorneys representing thousands of plaintiffs -- home and business owners, municipalities and families of those killed in the 2017 fires -- have pushed back, pointing to state investigations that found PG&E power lines and equipment sparked at least 17 of last year's major wildfires. In 11 of those cases, Cal Fire said its investigators found evidence showing the utility was in violation of state safety laws, forwarding the reports to local prosecutors for review.

A Cal Fire report on the most destructive 2017 blaze, the Tubbs fire, is pending.

Plaintiff Norma Quintana, who lost her Napa home of nearly 30 years in the Atlas fire, said she is thrilled her case will be tried first. She initially was reluctant to join a lawsuit, but came to believe it necessary for fire survivors to promote better public policy and a safer electrical grid.

"This is what I want PG&E to understand: Our house is where we find solace and a sense of safety," said Quintana, an artist and photographer who lost decades of work. "And what's happened is people now don't feel safe."

In all cases, plaintiffs claim the investor-owned utility failed to adequately maintain its power equipment or properly prepare for hazardous risks associated with its infrastructure.

PG&E had asked the court to start the trials with the Tubbs fire before the other cases because it was the most destructive and deadly of the 2017 wildfires, igniting near Calistoga in northern Napa County and racing west overnight to burn entire Santa Rosa neighborhoods to the ground. The Tubbs fire alone killed 22 people and caused an estimated $8 billion in damage in Sonoma County, where more than 5,300 homes were lost in the fires.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow acknowledged there was "serious debate" around the cause of the Tubbs fire in his Nov. 2 decision to prioritize the Atlas fire case.

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