By admin 
The proposals to protect utility companies from liability for wildfires are fundamentally misguided. They all seek to help the utilities, which continue to be highly profitable, at the expense of wildfire survivors who need compensation.
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In the face of liability for their role in the devastating wildfires, California utility companies are pushing to change the law. They are doing so while pretending that their concern is helping those who suffer great losses. A coalition called “Wildfire Victims First” presents itself as advocating for wildfire survivors, but California’s three largest investor-owned utilities funded it: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.
Their campaign creates the appearance of grassroots support for reforms that would benefit the utilities.
Many proposals have been advanced and are being considered that would greatly help utility companies, including changing the law to reduce the likelihood of these companies being held liable, limiting their liability for emotional distress damages, and restricting attorneys’ fees. Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed taking these cases out of the courts, where juries award damages, and placing them in an administrative system for processing claims.
All of these actions — including the governor’s approach — would make it more difficult for wildfire survivors to recover from their losses and would lessen the compensation they receive.
This is exactly the wrong approach. Liability, as in all areas, serves two vital goals: deterring companies from engaging in unsafe practices and compensating injured individuals. Both are vitally important here.
The undeniable reality is that the utility companies have played a crucial role in some of the state’s devastating wildfires. In 2020, PG&E, California’s biggest utility, pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter after the Camp Fire, which investigations revealed was caused by its faulty equipment. PG&E’s CEO at the time, Bill Johnson, acknowledged the company’s failures, and the utility subsequently took significant steps to reduce the risk of wildfires from faulty equipment in the future.
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Edison CEO Pedro Pizarro acknowledged that its equipment may have been associated with the ignition of the 2025 Eaton fire in Los Angeles.
In this context, lessening the chances and extent of liability is the wrong message and gives the wrong incentives. The threat of liability is an important incentive for utilities to devote more resources to making sure that their equipment is not likely be play a role in creating wildfires. PG&E committed to bury 10,000 miles of power lines to reduce wildfire risks. Unfortunately, it did not make this commitment until after it faced the involuntary manslaughter charges and liabilities exceeding $30 billion.
Past litigation on behalf of wildfire survivors and research by government agencies and others has also identified several other remedial steps that utilities could take to minimize and perhaps even eliminate the threat of wildfires, including investing in covered conductors and underground power lines to prevent arcing, rigorous enforcement of public safety power shut off standards, aggressive vegetation management and the removal of equipment that is no longer being used so that induction is not a problem. The prospect of liability creates an incentive for utility companies to take these important actions.
Moreover, decreasing compensation for victims would come at a time when utilities are reporting large profits, including after the recent Palisades and Eaton fires in 2025. A preliminary study by the Energy and Policy Institute found that Edison’s profit margin was one of the highest among utility companies nationwide at 26.11%. Edison reported $4.5 billion in 2025 profit, compared with $1.3 billion in 2024. In the three calendar years preceding the Eaton Fire, Edison International paid more than $3.3 billion in dividends to its shareholders. These are not companies that need legal protection from liability.
An Aug 11 poll by Hart Research found that 71% of respondents opposed limiting wildfire survivors’ legal rights. In fact, even after being told that restrictions could stabilize utility finances and prevent rate increases, 63% remained opposed.
Wildfire survivors deserve to have full legal remedies against utilities when their equipment failures and inadequate measures to reduce the risk of wildfires result in devastating loss of life and property damage. Changing the rules — whether to decrease the chances of liability or to take cases out of the courts — only helps the utility companies at the expense of all of us, especially those who suffer catastrophic losses from wildfires.
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Erwin Chemerinsky is dean and professor of law at the UC Berkeley School of Law.