Firefighters work to contain wildfires near Los Angeles Jan. 9. Photo: Amanda Bronstad/ALM
Two of the largest wildfires in Los Angeles history burned thousands of buildings and more than two dozen people.
But lawyers for the victims are pursuing different strategies in the courts.
At least three lawsuits have been filed by victims of the Palisades wildfire, which scorched more than 23,000 acres as of Jan. 27, 2025. The suits all name the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power as defendants.
Still, the number of cases involving the Palisades fire pales in comparison to the nearly 30 lawsuits filed against Southern California Edison and its parent company, Edison International, over the Eaton fire, which destroyed 12,000 structures and killed 17 people.
That’s because the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, which is the nation’s largest municipal utility, can’t be held liable for failure to provide fire protection services under California Government Code 850, said Alex “Trey” Robertson. He brought suits over both of this month’s Los Angeles wildfires, as well as the 2023 wildfire in Hawaii in which Maui County was sued over its fire department.
“We were very heavily involved in the Maui fire cases, and, there, the Hawaii law is much different,” said Robertson, of Robertson & Associates, in Westlake Village, Calif. “You can sue a government agency, or government employee, if you can show gross negligence. They have that exception under Hawaii law. California law doesn’t allow that here.”
The claims aren’t the same, either.
The Eaton fire cases have a host of allegations including negligence and punitive damages, while the Palisades lawsuits bring inverse condemnation claims over the water supply system. Instead of alleging the city of Los Angeles caused the Palisades fire, the cases allege its failure to adequately provide water resources to firefighters contributed to the destruction of residential homes and businesses. In particular, the suits say, the city had a 117 million-gallon reservoir out of commission for nearly a year while accepting contractor bids to repair its cover as a cost savings measure.
“The Palisades Fire was an inescapable and unavoidable consequence of the egregious failure of the water supply system servicing areas in and around Pacific Palisades, including having an empty water reservoir," Peter McNulty, of the McNulty Law Firm, who filed a suit on Tuesday, said in a statement. "This failure was a substantial factor in causing my clients and others to suffer enormous losses."
A Los Angeles City Clerk representative did not respond to a request for comment.
‘Better than a poke in an eye'
The Palisades cases, all filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, have some high-profile lead plaintiffs, including Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag, previous stars of MTV’s reality TV show “The Hills,” who publically chronicled the loss of their home and joined Tuesday's lawsuit. McNulty said he has more than a half a dozen clients who are lawyers who anticipate filing suit over their homes, which the Palisades fire burned down. A lot of them used to live in Malibu, he said, "who moved to the Palisades because they thought it would never burn."
Despite the limited scope of claims for Palisades fire victims, the lawsuits could recoup living expenses, code upgrades and attorney fees, among other things, McNulty said.
"It's way better than a poke in an eye," he said.
Robertson brought a Jan. 13 lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of 17 victims of the Palisades fire, including Daniel Grigsby, the general counsel of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team. On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council discussed his case before a closed door session.
In the Eaton fire cases, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge on Tuesday ordered Edison to preserve evidence, in of the cases filed so far. Three of the cases are wrongful death actions, all brought by attorney Ben Crump of Ben Crump Law in Tallahassee, Florida.
Robertson, who filed a Jan. 13 case against Edison on behalf of a dozen residents in or near Altadena, the unincorporated Los Angeles County area north of Pasadena decimated by the fire, said he hiked into Eaton Canyon on Sunday with his investigators and a drone to inspect the base of the transmission tower that lawsuits claim sparked the Eaton fire. Unlike the allegations against the Los Angeles Department of Power, the cases accuse Edison of failing to de-energize its transmission towers in preparation for the Santa Ana winds, causing the Eaton fire.
“I’m planning to file more cases this week and next,” he said of the Palisades lawsuits. “But most of the focus by the wildfire lawyer bar is on the Eaton Canyon fire.”
Editor's note: Amanda Bronstad is an Edison customer impacted by the Eaton fire. This article first published in The Recorder.
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