December 28, 2022 – Today firm lawyers Nick Carlin, Brian Conlon, and Kyle O’Malley filed a response on behalf of plaintiff Anthony Gantner and California utility customers to PG&E’s amici curiae in the California Supreme Court. The case, Gantner v. PG&E (Case No. S273340), seeks to hold PG&E liable for harms its decades of negligent grid maintenance caused, including the harms caused by PG&E’s “Public Safety Power Shutoffs” (“PSPSs”) made necessary by the negligent grid maintenance.

PG&E’s amici—its fellow California utilities San Diego Gas & Electric (“SDG&E”) and Southern California Edison (“SCE”), their lobbying group Edison Electric Institute (“EEI”), and their regulator California Public Utilities Commission (“CPUC”)—argued that California utilities should not be liable for damages caused by their negligent grid maintenance and resulting need to shut off power because those damages would interfere with CPUC’s regulatory authority over PSPSs.

Notably, these amici (collectively or individually): (1) claim that imposing liability on PG&E for its negligent grid maintenance would “hamper the use” of PSPSs by discouraging utilities from shutting off the power—even when necessary to avoid catastrophic wildfires; (2) ask the California Supreme Court to overrule inverse condemnation precedents—taking the position that utilities should not be liable even for the wildfire damages their negligence causes; (3) argue that utilities have no duty to supply electricity to customers at all and cannot be liable for shutting off power even when the power shut off is caused by the utility’s own negligence; and (4) blame climate change and Californians living outside of “urban centers”—not decades of negligent grid maintenance—for increasing wildfire risks.

The firm addressed these misguided and dangerous positions in turn, pointing out that (1) tort liability deters negligence and incentivizes utilities to uphold their duty to maintain the grid; (2) the inverse condemnation precedents are not before the Court and taking the position that they should be overruled exposes PG&E’s and Utility Amici’s clear motive to “avoid liability for any harm their negligent maintenance has inflicted on Californians;” (3) precedent is clear that PG&E owes a duty to its customers in this circumstance; and (4) despite being aware of human-caused climate change since the late 1960s, these same utilities spent decades sowing confusion around climate change as part of a successful campaign to stall regulation of emissions and, for years leading up to the PSPSs at issue in this case, PG&E sacrificed rural grid maintenance to cut costs, pay out huge dividends to investors, equip executives with golden parachutes, and contribute millions to political campaigns.

The firm's response to PG&E's amicus briefs is here. To see the amicus briefs filed on behalf of the Plaintiffs, see here and here.

No further briefing is expected in the case. Oral argument has not yet been set.