Buffett’s Oregon Utility Says Fire Lawsuits Pose Shutdown Risk
(Bloomberg) -- Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s PacifiCorp says ongoing litigation from massive wildfires in 2020 that exposed the company to billions of dollars in damages is jeopardizing its ability to continue providing power to hundreds of thousands of customers in Oregon.
In an emergency court filing Friday, the company said a Portland judge has set up an “impossible schedule” of 160 jury trials “week after week” over 2 1/2 years. The trials are for small groups of individual homeowners to seek millions of dollars in monetary damages for homes and businesses destroyed by the blazes four years ago, PacifiCorp said.
The unrelenting pace of the trials “imperils the operations of an essential public utility on which millions of customers depend” and threatens to “impose a crushing financial burden” on the largest electric grid operator in western US, according to the filing.
The company already has been hit with almost $500 million in damages for about 90 plaintiffs following a jury’s finding in 2023 that PacifiCorp was negligent for failing to shut off power lines ahead of a big wind storm. More than 1,900 fire victims in western Oregon have yet to present evidence of damages to juries in a case that’s shaping up as one of the biggest in the state’s history.
While destructive wildfires are now an almost routine part of summer in the American West, PacifiCorp’s decision to take its chances with a jury in 2023 marked the first time a lawsuit over large-scale devastation blamed on a utility’s equipment went to a trial.
PacifiCorp has said it’s confident it will get the landmark verdict overturned on appeal. But it’s now asking a state appeals court to halt further damages trials until the appeal is resolved, which could take several years.
PacifiCorp representatives didn’t immediately respond outside regular business hours to a voice mail request for comment.
In a regulatory filing last month, PacifiCorp didn’t describe its financial risk from the 2020 fires in the same dire terms as the court filing. The company said it has paid more than $1 billion in settlements, and estimated that probable losses for the fires totaled about $2.7 billion at the end of June.
Lawyers for fire victims declined to comment on Friday’s filing. They argued in a filing last week that pausing the trials would be unfair, as the fires “left thousands of Oregonians homeless, struggling to make ends meet, and traumatized.”
In 2024, Berkshire Chairman Warren Buffett warned in his annual letter to investors that wildfires have turned utilities across western US into risky investments. Utilities in California, Colorado, Hawaii and Texas have also faced billions in fire liabilities.
PacifiCorp has explored options with Oregon regulators and lawmakers to minimize its wildfire exposure, including recouping its litigation losses from customers and capping damages for non-economic claims.
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