Sacramento Bee: PG&E to Pay $1B for Wildfire Damage to California Cities
According to an article in the Sacramento Bee, PG&E has agreed to a $1 billion dollar settlement with 14 local government agencies seeking to cover the damage from a series of deadly wildfires in Northern California that killed 85 people and destroyed nearly 14,000 homes in 2017 and 2018. A majority of the $1 billion settlement will go to four California cities and counties with $270 million earmarked to go to Paradise, a NorCal town mostly destroyed by the Camp Fire.
PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January, and therefore the settlement must still be approved by a bankruptcy court, which us unlikely to happen until other lawsuits against PG&E are resolved, according to the article.
Camp Fire attorney Mike Danko noted “The bankruptcy court approval is not trivial.”
The article also discusses recent approvals by regulators that allow utilities to temporarily cut off electricity to possibly hundreds of thousands of customers during peak fire conditions to avoid starting more wildfires. These outages could mean multiday blackouts for large cities in Northern California such as San Francisco and San Jose, according to PG&E.
About the Northern California Fire Lawyers
Northern California Fire Lawyers is a team of more than 30 attorneys from a coalition of three Northern California law firms: Corey, Luzaich, de Ghetaldi & Riddle, Danko Meredith and Gibbs Law Group. Collectively, our fire lawyers have more experience investigating and bringing claims against PG&E than any law firm in California. Our attorneys have been appointed by California judges to leadership positions in some of the largest fire and disaster cases, including the Butte Fire Cases, 2017 and 2018 PG&E Fire Cases, and San Bruno Explosion lawsuits.
We have earned hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and verdicts for our clients, and members of our team have been honored for their work with numerous awards, including “Top Plaintiff Lawyers in California,” “Trial Lawyer of the Year,” and “Top Women Lawyers in Northern California,” among others.