PacifiCorp found negligent in four Oregon wildfires; jury awards victims $72 million

PacifiCorp’s negligence led to four Labor Day 2020 wildfires that ravaged Oregon and the utility has been ordered to pay nearly $72 million in damages to a subset of the victims, according to a Multnomah County jury decision announced Monday.

The jury found the company was grossly negligent and its conduct was reckless, siding with the plaintiffs on almost every one of their legal claims. It awarded the 17 named plaintiffs $4.4 million in economic damages and $67.5 million in noneconomic damages — with the potential for an even larger sum if the jury awards punitive damages.

PacifiCorp plans to appeal the verdict.

The 17 named plaintiffs in the lawsuit represented a wider class of thousands of fire victims, and the jury’s determination applies to the entire class unless victims opted out of the lawsuit. Collectively, the four fires destroyed nearly 2,900 properties, and altogether, the victims are seeking $1.6 billion in damages from Oregon’s second-largest utility. Damages for other members of the class will be determined in later proceedings.

After seven weeks of detailed testimony from eyewitnesses, property owners, expert witnesses and others, the jury took just two days to determine that PacifiCorp’s negligence was a cause or substantial cause of the damages in the four fires. The utility declined to de-energize its power lines for any of its 600,000 customers during the Labor Day windstorm, despite internal and external forecasts days in advance of the impending winds and extreme fire danger they would bring.

The jury found PacifiCorp’s conduct responsible for igniting fires in the Santiam Canyon 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.

For victims, the jury’s verdict is a vindication of sorts. They’ve waited nearly three years for some resolution to the financial and emotional trauma that followed the fires. Many lost everything. Some were insured and have been able to begin rebuilding their lives. Others were underinsured or completely uninsured and have been living in limbo as they awaited the outcome of the litigation.

Their sense of anger over PacifiCorp’s inaction that day were palpable at points in the trial. And during Wednesday’s closing arguments, their attorneys did their best to elicit the jury’s empathy and anger at a “massive corporation” that allegedly caused the fires, destroyed related evidence and whose executives claimed they wouldn’t do anything differently if they had a do-over of that weekend.

“You have the ability to hold them accountable, to hold them responsible for what happened on Labor Day 2020,” Nick Rosinia, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told jurors. “You have the ability to tell the survivors that they matter, that their lives haven’t been erased, that someone has heard what happened, the pain, the suffering, the trauma, everything that has gone into the past few years. … That’s the power of your verdict.”

Monday’s finding of gross negligence and recklessness in the four fires opens the utility to punitive damages of up to five times those awarded Monday. That will be determined in a separate proceeding that begins with opening arguments by the parties today.

In a statement after Monday’s verdict, PacifiCorp said it plans to appeal and “we are confident we will prevail.”

“We are proud to have told the story of our incredible employees, who meet the call to service every day in support of our communities and customers and did so in the face of the preexisting, lightning caused Beachie Creek fire that roared into the Santiam Canyon causing widespread damage that weekend,” the company said.

Those and other Labor Day blazes burned more than 1.2 million acres in Oregon, destroyed upward of 5,000 homes and structures, and claimed nine lives. While Oregon has experienced other megafires, the collective scope of destruction from fires ignited that day was unprecedented, with some calling it the largest man-made disaster in state history.

PacifiCorp has separately been sued by some 215 families and seven timber companies who lost property in the Archie Creek fire, which ignited on Labor Day and burned along the North Umpqua River east of Roseburg. Those plaintiffs are seeking nearly $600 million in economic damages alone in a Douglas County trial set for November.