Berkshire Utility Presses Wildfire Appeal With Billions at Stake

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s PacifiCorp is asking an appeals court to throw out a 2023 jury verdict in a wildfire class-action case that has exposed the company to billions of dollars in losses.

PacifiCorp, which calls itself the largest grid operator in the western US, has been under mounting pressure after being blamed for igniting a series of wildfires that devastated Oregon in September 2020. In the first major wildfire case against a utility to go to a trial, the company was found grossly negligent for failing to shut off electricity in its service areas ahead of dangerously dry and windy weather.

Related: Buffett Utility Reaches Oregon Wildfire Settlement With Nearly 1,500 Victims

Awards of $645 million for 119 victims — and the prospect that damages could ultimately exceed 10 times that amount — have rattled PacifiCorp bondholders, upended the company’s credit rating and prompted a warning from the utility last year that it may need to shut operations in Oregon.

PacifiCorp’s lawyers are scheduled to present arguments Wednesday to the Oregon Court of Appeals. They’re asking a three-judge panel to rule that the case never should have proceeded as a class action on behalf of thousands of individual fire victims. The utility argued in court filings that the class improperly grouped together property owners affected by different wildfires across distant areas.

Lawyers for the victims have countered that the trial judge correctly determined that PacifiCorp’s liability could be resolved using common proof despite differences among individual victims’ property losses.

Related: Utilities’ Extreme Plan to Stop Wildfires: Shut Off the Power

PacifiCorp also contends that an Oregon statute bars plaintiffs from recovering non-economic damages for wildfire-related property losses. But plaintiffs’ lawyers have defended the jury awards of $4 million per victim for emotional distress, on average, as legally permitted.

The company faces an accelerated schedule for claims by about 1,400 remaining fire victims in the class action to be resolved this year and next. A ruling from the appeals court is expected in six months to a year.

Top photo: The remains of homes and vehicles line a residential street on September 16, 2020 in Talent, Oregon. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images).