Attorneys for both PacifiCorp and victims of four of Oregon’s catastrophic fires on Labor Day 2020 made their closing argument to jurors Wednesday in the $1.6 billion class action lawsuit that has played out in Multnomah County Circuit Court during the last seven weeks.
Jurors will now determine whether PacifiCorp’s power lines were responsible for all or a substantial part of the damage caused in four of those Labor Day fires, whether the utility was negligent for, among other things, failing to de-energize its power lines before and during the events, and whether the utility subsequently destroyed evidence of its culpability in the fires.
At issue are the cause and resulting damages to owners of some 2,500 properties destroyed in the Santiam Canyon fires east of Salem, the Echo Mountain Complex near Lincoln City, the South Obenchain Fire northeast of Medford and the Two Four Two Fire near the Upper Klamath town of Chiloquin. There are 17 named plaintiffs in the lawsuit who represent the wider class of fire victims, all of whom will be bound by the jury’s determination of PacifiCorp’s responsibility for the individual fires unless they opted out of the lawsuit.
Since opening arguments in the case on April 25, both sides spent weeks presenting their cases to jurors, offering testimony from eyewitnesses, victims, expert witnesses, company executives, firefighters and others. Jurors have heard in minute detail about esoteric aspects of utility operations, wildfire planning, public safety power shutoffs, weather forecasting and fire behavior modeling. They’ve also heard harrowing stories from firefighters, community members and property owners who lost everything in the fires.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys have built their case around the claim that PacifiCorp was well aware of the east wind event and extreme fire risks days before it arrived on the evening of Labor Day, but did virtually nothing to prepare its employees and customers, and never even considered de-energizing lines outside small areas it had previously designated as high risk.
The defense has taken the opposite tack, portraying the utility as a leader in wildfire preparedness whose employees were monitoring and tracking the impending storm days in advance and exercised reasonable care throughout the “unprecedented” event to protect customers.
PacifiCorp has conceded that its power lines caused several fires on Sept. 7 and Sept 8. 2020, including the Two Four Two fire, one of the two ignitions in the Echo Mountain Complex, and a fire that broke out at the Gates School in the Santiam Canyon on Labor Day evening. But it has denied any negligence, and therefore any liability, in those instances, and contends that two of those fires would not have harmed any of the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, the utility has disputed the plaintiff’s theory that its power lines caused the South Obenchain fire, the more destructive of the two fires in the Echo Mountain Complex, and the destruction of the plaintiffs’ properties in the Santiam Canyon.
The Santiam Canyon is home to more than half the properties destroyed in the four fires and both the victims’ lawyers and the defense focused a substantial portion of their cases on the causes of that conflagration. The victims’ claim that multiple power line fires ignited amid the windstorm and raged through the towns of Gates, Lyons and Mill City as the east winds were channeled down the Santiam Canyon.
The defense, meanwhile, has pinned the blame on the Beachie Creek fire, an existing fire ignited by lightning three weeks before Labor Day in the Opal Creek Wilderness, well to the northeast of the canyon. The defense claims that fire blew up amid the wind storm, made a rapid westward run, and blew flaming embers miles ahead of the main fire that caused spot fires in the canyon.
Because more than one factor likely contributed to damages in the Santiam Canyon, the jury will be asked to determine whether PacifiCorp’s actions were a “substantial cause” of the harm there. In the other three fires, by contrast, the jury will determine PacifiCorp’s culpability based on whether the harm there would have occurred “but for” its conduct.
Judge Steffan Alexander said he would spend some time Thursday morning explaining verdict forms to the jury, then release the case to them for deliberation.
–Ted Sickinger; tsickinger@oregonian.com; 503-221-8505; @tedsickinger
