From The Daily Caller
3:56 PM 12/31/2018 | Energy
Tim Pearce | Energy Reporter
California’s largest utility could face murder charges or manslaughter charges if found responsible for sparking recent, deadly wildfires around the state, according to the state attorney general.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, filed documents Friday with Northern California’s federal district court warning that the utility company Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) may face severe criminal charges if its operations or equipment are found to have sparked fatal wildfires, NBC News reported. (RELATED: ‘One Life Lost Is Too Many’: Trump Signs Bill To Help Prevent Catastrophic Wildfires)
The Camp Fire torched roughly 150,000 acres north of Sacramento in November. It killed at least 86 people and is California’s deadliest wildfire on record, according to California’s state fire agency. The fire destroyed nearly 19,000 structures. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but early reports suggest the disaster began with a broken PG&E transmission line.
PG&E has acknowledged that its equipment may have started the Camp Fire, and U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the utility on Nov. 27 to investigate whether its equipment was responsible.
The financial pressure on the California utility has increased as more deadly wildfires caused by the company burn parts of the state. The costs of the fires are also being passed on to PG&E ratepayers after outgoing Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation allowing the utility to increase power costs to cover expenses from wildfires.
The insurance costs of damage done by the Camp and Woolsey Fires, which burned in California at roughly the same time, are estimated to range around $8.6 billion, according to the financial services company CoreLogic.
California investigators found that PG&E equipment caused 12 of 15 major wildfires that hit the state in 2017. Environmentalists blame increasing temperatures from climate change for the fires while President Donald Trump and Republicans call for better land management to reduce the risk of disaster.
In addition to PG&E, Brown has taken heat for vetoing a 2016 bill that aimed at mitigating risk from utilities sparking wildfires.
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Maybe Moonbeam should be facing those charges . Karma !
Once again,these DemocRATS aren’t looking at the ramifications of them taking this company to court.These”Wildfires”can be prevented by using things like”Controlled Burn-offs”which has been proven to work in many countries all over the world.Moonbeam and his “Public Serpents”have prevented these practices from taking place,so that makes THEM liable.LOL.
“DemocRATS”? Didn’t you mean DemonRats?
As far as I can tell, California and its legislators have immunity from criminal charges and civil actions. 🙁
I don’t know anything about US law in that regard being an Australian (where I think the idiots ruling us peasants have similar immunity ) however I think it would at least be a defense under the law especially if there has been a veto of actions that could have reduced the effect.
That sounds reasonable.
Sadly, just because something sounds reasonable, that doesn’t mean it will work in a court of law.
There is the eggshell skull rule which says, that defendants must “take their victims as they find them”.
On the other hand, there is the crumbling skull rule (see link above).
Murder is covered by criminal law, not civil law. That said, in civil law a plaintiff can be found to be partly at fault for her own injuries. link That reduces the amount of any damage award.
Just because your actions result in a person’s death, you are not necessarily guilty of murder.
In that case, the lawyers will argue about what constitutes an unusually high risk.
Anyway, it’s complicated.
Quilter52
I think the court of elector opinion is the only place politicians get their just desserts. Put new bums on the benches. It is a good a cure as any.
Along with several environmental groups.
Typical banana republic response…well done California..
Unless soon to be former Governor Brown as Cell Block Captain is there to greet them there is no justice.
“U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the utility on Nov. 27 to investigate whether its equipment was responsible.”
Shouldn’t that be done by a disinterested third party?
Silly, silly man! Come check out how we do things in Australia.. the bureaucrats have demonstrated it’s perfectly acceptable for them to investigate themselves and this is evidenced by the fact they always find they’ve never done anything wrong! See.. all you ever needed to do was what you were told – trust them.
/rolling on the ground levels of sarc
Obviously you’ve never been the subject of a Royal Commission!
Agreed.
Haven’t had the pleasure.
I’m thinking of the few times I’ve had departments in front of tribunals for flagrant, repetitive, clear and admitted breaches of their own procedure and the law or acts of parliament. In all instances despite the admission of failure it was explained to me by the authoritative body that they don’t like to prosecute as it’s ‘too adversarial’ and they prefer to operate by negotiation – in each instance the department has offered to restructure or alter their procedures and that’s been deemed sufficient. In a couple of cases there were never any penalties listed for failure to comply or breaches of the laws or acts. Kinda how Wilson’s Parking in WA illegally bought all those personal records and it was blamed on a junior employee and despite being a serious breach of the law, the department which sold the data didn’t face any penalty that I was aware of.
Sure that’s just my experience, but I don’t seem to recall to many Royal Commissions being called , not really, and lesser investigations seem to often yield little to no change. More like ‘we’re sorry we got caught, we’ll try not to be caught in future’
You are right about the local level. Eventually the regulator depends on the regulated to keep his job.The latest Royal Comission into the financial sector showed this in droves. As a result the regulator will be embedded into banks. Criminal action is forshadowed.
The situation in Australia is getting better.
As a result of the Black Saturday fires in Victoria new earth leakage limiters will be installed over 7 years.
“The limiters, installed at sub-stations, stop an electrical current within milliseconds of a power line coming into contact with the ground or vegetation.”
‘The state government contributed $5.5 million to the research and development of the new technology, which has been extensively tested more than 2000 times, including in Black Saturday conditions.’
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/worldfirst-technology-to-stop-power-lines-igniting-bushfires-20151122-gl4ynl.html
In that sense, the Brown administration’Should have known’ the technology available to prevent fires
and the methods of pattern burning to lower dry biomass.
The outcome for the people, the utility and a lesser extent the Government was very sanguine.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/judge-approves-record-500m-settlement-over-deadly-kilmore-eastkinglake-black-saturday-bushfires-20141223-12cq3x.html
Civil class action makes Government focus on the real issues in bushfire prevention.
‘The bushfire began after a live line – owned and operated by AusNet Services – hit a power pole cable stay, igniting vegetation. The power line failed because a lightning strike had initiated cracks that made it susceptible to wind stress years earlier’
Earlier work in 2014 put powerlines underground.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/power-lines-to-be-buried-as-750m-firesafety-project-begins-20140311-34kg4.html
Excerpted from article:
12 of 15 caused by PG&E equipment, …… HUH?
Sounds to me like, iffen inspectors couln’t figure out the actual cause, …. then they blamed it on faulty PG&E equipment.
Nope, not faulty equipment but by simply causing sparks when high winds blew tree limbs onto the lines. The claim was that the utilities should have trimmed trees back far enough that trees limbs broken off by 80 MPH winds would not hit them. (Have you any idea how far that might be?)
As far as equipment failure, even the Camp fire claim was about the possibility that on going line maintenance may have left a single point vulnerable and the location was near the ignition point of the fire. Remember the path and design of that particular power line was reviewed, and approved by the CPUC and several other agencies before it was built. Maintenance on that line and its funding had to have been included in the previous utility rate case and approved by the CPUC.
The next issue is the California began by attempting to use their Reverse Condemnation Rule that allowed them to drop the bill onto utilities who would then simply increase their rates by a small increment to cover the cost. Unfortunately, the CPUC did not follow the rule and allow the investor owned utilities to increase their rates as required by the rule. That, of course, was noted by banks and the stock market, resulting in a drop in stock value by half. The saddest part of this is PG&E and SoCal Edison is held by many retirement fund groups doubling the burn rate of stock to meet pension payouts.
A fer piece, for sure, even if the limb was only airborne for 10 seconds.
Own nothing, control everything sayeth the Single Party Democrats.
That’s the way fascism works. The State doesn’t own anything, but due to overwhelming regulations and strict pricing controls, the State controls everything. And one party is pushing for that – the party that overwhelmingly claims the other is “fascist”.
That’s not correct. Liberal Progressive ideology is essentially low grade Communism, not Fascism. California and the US are rapidly becoming more and more Communist, not Fascist. You could call it phase 2 Communism.
You can tell because California lets in millions of foreigners who damage the environment and destroy traditional American culture. California is also at the forefront of the ‘global warming’ agenda.
No Fascist government would ever do such a thing. It violates core Fascist values. Hitler would never have allowed mass waves of foreigners to enter Germany. He would never have allowed an ‘anchor baby’ clause in the constitution. He would never have shipped German industry to China, or let an international ‘global warming’ lobby have any say in Germany.
Communism regards nationalism as the greatest threat. California leaders bring in foreigners this because they regard traditional American nationalism as dangerous to the State. Americans are too independent and apt to get out of control. Can’t have that, so every effort must be made to limit their growth, access to positions of power, and to drive them out of the state. Replacement.
Communism is a world wide conspiracy, with world control as a primary objective. Global warming is just one tool in their arsenal to consolidate power at the top.
That’s why Democrats are correct when they call Trump a fascist. He’s certainly no Hitler, but the very notion of national sovereignty and borders is the core of Fascism. His opposition to ‘global warming’ is heresy in their eyes.
What sort of punishment can a large corporation expect to receive if found guilty? Can corporate officers be held accountable for jail time or will they simply face fines whose costs will then be passed on to the consumers along with any additional costs to bring the transmission lines up to requirements.
…the latter
between windmills, solar, green crap…….no one will be able to afford to run a light bulb
An indemnity clause is a common element of contracts, used to shift potential costs from one party to another – in this case, company officers bear no personal responsibility for any wrongdoing by the corporation. Let’s hope to see the corporation (an electric utility in this case) behind bars, and customers will be left in the dark.
If this is true then the US needs legislation to ‘Lift the corporate veil’
“[T]he separate legal personality of a company is to be disregarded only if the court
can see that there is, in fact or in law, a partnership between companies in a group, or
that there is a mere sham or facade in which that company is playing a role, or that the
creation or use of the company was designed to enable a legal or fiduciary obligation
to be evaded or a fraud to be perpetrated.”33
Curious Georg – January 2, 2019 at 2:39 pm
But what is far, far, far worse than that, ….. elected politicians bear no personal responsibility for Laws they pass that cause harm, sickness and/or deaths of innocent citizens.
Thus, …………….
The “Rule of Law” in the US is becoming “more n’ more” like an often repeated “really sick joke” that only the nefarious Officers of the Courts and their clients, associates, family, political donors, etc., get a “good” laugh out of whenever the Judge’s or Jury’s ruling is in their favor, which is far more often than not.
Selective criminal accusations, selective arrests, selective prosecutions, selective witness testimony, selective guilty charges, selective jail/prison incarcerations, etc.
All Rules of Law, ……are strictly obeyed, …… except when Supreme Court Justices, Federal Judges, State Judges, Federal Attorney General, Federal Prosecutors, State Attorney Generals and/or State/County Prosecutors decide not to obey the Rules of Law.
PG&E is hardly a “corporation” as we think of corporations. They are a Public Utility; an energy monopoly … and a pawn of our Communist CA government. They are governed and regulated by PUC oversight. The same PUC that is “all-in” on global warming and are activity encouraging the diversion of maintenance budget into “public education about global warming”. Look at the CRAP in PG&E’s budget that has NOTHING whatsoever to do with their primary mission which is to deliver CHEAP, PLENTIFUL energy to the residents and businesses of CA. I blame the political correctness of changing PG&E’s primary mission from energy delivery to propagandizing and advertising global warming and high-priced “alternative energy” … “renewable” … sources for the outrageous, unnecessary, loss of lives.
The losers? The people of CA. The energy ratepayers who are becoming increasingly energy POOR. A 3-tier punishing Communist rate structure is transferring the wealth from the middle class to the PG&E (and government regulator) elites. The leftist CA government is using PG&E to force the public to behave as they demand … to use less energy … or else!! … the leftist government will make you POOR. Is it any wonder that “corporations” have embraced “global warming”? It is making them filthy rich!! Because of “Global Warming” the PUC is allowing PG&E to charge consumers punishing rates … to “change our behaviour”. The Communists have taken full control of our energy delivery and maintenance systems … the DEATHS of our fellow citizens is on all their heads.
If Becerra applied joint and several liability for the fires, the Sierra Club , the NRDC, and other green groups intervening to prevent wildlands management would also be at fault. Becerra will do so sometime about the twelfth of never.
How does one charge a utility (a corporation) with murder? Do all the employees and shareholders (including the state and state pension fund holders) all spend 5 minutes in jail upon conviction so the company can serve its 15 to 20 years?
And yet the state is run by the party that wants to claim that corporations have no speech rights because they are not a person. Only a person can commit murder so if they charge the utility (a corporation) with murder, aren’t they de facto establishing corporations as persons and thus eliminating their argument? Am I expecting too much to have the left be consistent in their thinking?
+100
Exactly my thoughts when I read this.
Shouldn’t the green groups and their supporters that opposed proper forest management be charged as well? They are perhaps even more responsible than PG&E which is heavily regulated and thus more limited it its ability to mitigate such fires.
Couldn’t agree more. The main issue is not how the fires started, but why they became so large and hard to control. In theory green groups that oppose forest management are equally guilty for large fires started by arson, carelessness, lightning etc. Maybe it needs politicians who aren’t in thrall to the environmental movement to properly hold these groups to account.
It’s California–go for the insanity defense.
Good one.
This is outrageous. This is the kind of injustice that leads to a society’s destabilization and collapse. The people in Paradise and surrounding areas knew what kind of risk they were living with. They rolled the dice and lost.
icisil
Speaking of which, the town was originally known as “Pair o’ Dice.”
“The costs of the fires are also being passed on to PG&E ratepayers…”
Can you call the State of California’s gross mismanagement of its forests “murder?”
“Our grandchildren won’t know what electricity was…”
Shades of Italy charging Italian seismologists for failing to predict an earthquake.
That was a stunningly silly political anti-science idea too.
It’s not that they failed to predict, they actually went on TV to declare that there was no danger of an earthquake.
Make your indulgence payments to the high speed rail construction unions and you can get off with good behavior.
Or do they have an electric chair for an electric utility to be electrocuted in?
But Execution Day dawned still, and cloudy.
PGE rose from the chair at sun-down, alive and unharmed.
The sillies had connected the Chair to unreliables!
Just imagining a press report.
Auto
“They” will soon figure out that all executions are to be carried out on the first available sunny and windy day.
… the end of electricity.
You know, like “the end of snow”.
The former is the more likely outcome of “climate change”.
The the Governor’s office has any sense, they’ll squash that idea and fast. They do not want a high-profile court case, followed widely by the public, serving as an expose into the proximate cause of the death and destruction — which is California’s forestry management policies.
Um, I dont understand this. So the leftist greenie radicals who actually lit the fires, do they work for the utility?
Electricity is evil. It must be abolished. All power lines should be declared illegal! (/sarc)
Of course, burying power lines in certain areas is something that should not be mentioned. We wouldn’t really want to improve anything. Then we would lose the excuse to eliminate electricity.
For too long electricity companies have seen this Green fad as just another way to fleece the customer by raising prices. Almost all of them jumped on the green bandwagon in some way.
The result is that far from trying to stop it growing, the green monster has grown larger and larger encouraged by these companies for whom higher energy prices equals higher profits …. but now it threatens those profits of the very same electricity companies who helped create the green monster in the first place.
The Green monster now bites the hand that fed it – and many big corps are regretting allowing it to grow so big.
Mike,
It seems you have never studied utility finances. Especially in California, Public Utilities Commisions are antagonistic against investor owned utilities, I suppose believing their job is to ‘control’ them. Any profit obtained by investor owned utilities in California is negotiated in rate cases every two years. Those profits are usually set by the state at some low but marginally reasonable rate of return on investment.
Poor performance, poor maintenance, low efficiency, not providing the required amount of “Renewable Generation” advertising, etc, (real or imagined) all result in down checks on that rate of return. As you will notice, PG&E has not been able to pay dividends on its stock for quite a long time now.
Just pandering to some of the voters. I’ll take the claim seriously when we see a few corporate and/or government executives behind bars.
I can understand a possible charge of Negligent Homicide, but Murder seems to be over the top and unlikely to be able to get a conviction.
Exactly – In South Africa a bus driver ran a bus load of kids over a railway line – against the lights and after some reckless overtaking of the cars at the crossing. Something like 12 kids were killed in the collision, the driver survived and was charged and convicted of murder.
Dumb – murder requires intent.
He walked on appeal.
Congress can abrogate state governmental immunity by passing a statute that expressly provides for private damage suits against states.
I bet the VP involved with “Green” stuff was being fast tracked and networking with highly placed people in the renewable industries and in government, while the VP tasked with cutting underbrush was going nowhere in the company, and that same VP can now be fired as a result of these fires.
Happy New Year.
I hope those bozos go ahead and attempt to prosecute the utility.
Imagine if they succeed..they really are not going to like their new rules.
Shades of the pound me too meme.
Our progressive comrades have already told us;” We do not need evidence,due process or any of those old traditions..Just a “credible woman to make the claims”.
So in an alternate personality,I self identify as woman and claim that the politicians,environmentalists and bureaucrats conspired to burn out these citizenry.
Hang them now.
Have trial next year .
If we remember.
Democrats told us they agree with these methods, just last year.
Actually I recall some of the talking heads on Fox offering up same pablum.
What is “credible” to the credulous?
Is anyone saying ” murder” other than the “energy reporter”? And the headline here at WUWT. Let’s not get into the fake news business. California’s rulers deserve severe punishment, no doubt, along with PG&E if found guilty but let’s get real. I am sure that those who lost loved ones would like to see a murder charge but it is very unlikely to happen.
JimG1, the article is based on a formal court submission by Beccerra (CA AG) concerning the PGE responsibility for its exploding high pressure gas line near San Fran that killed several in 2010. His view of CA criminal law, PGE can in fact be found criminally liable for murder or manslaughter.
“Is anyone saying ” murder” other than the “energy reporter”? And the headline here at WUWT.”
Indeed. The Daily Caller is not careful about accuracy. What the NBC report actually said (my bold) was
“State Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s office said PG&E could face the most serious in a range of criminal charges if it is found to have caused any of the recent deadly fires — and acted with malice in the operation and maintenance of its equipment, according to a brief filed Friday in Northern California’s federal district court.”
And of course they could, if they acted with malice.
The problem of culpability is not constrained by an NBC report of an Attorney General’s opinion.
Back home in Oz the concept of negligence is alive and well.
‘Residents of Tathra have accused authorities of negligence after they failed to heed warnings about the lack of bushfire hazard reduction in dense bushland around the NSW south coast town, now reeling from the loss of almost 70 homes.’
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/residents-accuse-council-of-negligence/news-story/2dedede3fc7d7bb0484087a116dd87e5
There is also a duty of care, not only by those who allegedly ignited the fire, but those who let the fuel build to a point where it was unstoppable.
‘The case supports the proposition that a landowner in
occupation of his land has a duty, when he is aware or ought
to be aware of a hazardous condition on the land which puts
the neighbouring land at risk, to take such steps as are
reasonable in all the circumstances to prevent or minimise
the risk of injury or damage to the neighbour’s property.’
https://www.publish.csiro.au/wf/pdf/WF17070
Malice is a broad church
‘In any statutory definition of a crime, malice must be taken … as requiring either:
an actual intention to do the particular kind of harm that in fact was done; or
recklessness as to whether such harm should occur or not (i.e. the accused has foreseen that the particular kind of harm might be done and yet has gone on to take the risk of it).’
This is apt in global warming debates
its called ‘The Precautionary Principle’.
As has been written elsewhere, it may be said of this Californian Administration
‘If you seek[its] legacy, look about you’.