Shasta County charges PG&E with 31 crimes for Zogg Fire

Facing 31 criminal charges in Shasta County for starting the deadly Zogg Fire, Pacific Gas & Electric admitted responsibility but denied Friday it had committed a crime.

District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett said she filed 11 felony charges, including manslaughter, and 20 misdemeanor counts Friday, days before the anniversary of the start of the blaze that burned over 56,000 acres and killed four people.

“You may wonder, ‘Why criminal charges against a corporation that can’t go to jail?’,” Bridgett said. “Well, because PG&E has a history, a repeated pattern of causing wildfires that is not getting better. It is only getting worse.”

Bridgett also announced the launch of a criminal investigation into PG&E’s involvement in the Dixie Fire along with District Attorneys Michael L. Ramsey of Butte County, David D. Hollister of Plumas County, Matthew Rogers of Tehama County and Susan M. Rios of Lassen County.

“Investigators from my bureau of investigations as well as Cal Fire have worked tirelessly on this case,” Bridgett said. “As a result I have determined we have sufficient evidence to prove without a reasonable doubt that PG&E is criminally liable for their reckless ignition of the Zogg Fire and the deaths and destruction it caused.”

In a statement issued shortly afterward, Chief Executive Officer Patti Poppe said PG&E has accepted Cal Fire’s determination that a tree contacted one of the company’s electrical lines and started the fire.

“We accept that conclusion. But we did not commit a crime,” Poppe said. “Today’s climate and unprecedented drought have forever changed the relationship between trees and power lines. And please know we’re not sitting idly by. We have established a new standard for our lines and the vegetation near them because it poses such a real risk to our communities.”

Bridgett is accusing the company of failing to cut down a tree that was marked for removal two years before the fire. People v. PG&E, 21-06622 (Shasta County Super. Ct., filed Sept. 24, 2021).

The company countered in its statement that two trained arborists walked the electrical line independently of one another and determined the tree in question could stay.

The criminal complaint filed in Shasta County Superior Court also included counts of recklessness in connection with last year’s Daniel Fire and Ponder Fire, as well as this year’s Woody Fire.

Last summer, the utility pleaded guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter in connection with the 2018 Camp Fire in Butte, which burned more than 153,000 acres.

PG&E is also facing criminal charges in Sonoma County over an alleged role in the Kincaid Fire. The utility challenged 22 of the 33 charges in a demurrer that was overruled this month, according to Sonoma County Deputy District Attorney Matthew R. Henning.

A preliminary hearing in that case is to be scheduled on Oct. 13. People v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., SRC-7452284 (Sonoma Super. Ct., filed April 6, 2021).

The utility is also under federal probation since 2017 for failing to properly inspect pipelines before a gas explosion that killed eight people in San Bruno. That probation expires in January.

“PG&E adamantly believes that probation cannot be extended. And the judge has stated that he’s done research and that at this point, he concluded that probation cannot be extended,” said Santa Clara University law professor Catherine Janet Kissee-Sandoval, who represents the utility’s ratepayers. The issue of whether a corporate criminal defendant’s probation can be extended past five years under federal law is an untested question and if it were to be extended, even though the judge has indicated otherwise, the extension would most likely be appealed, she said.

Probation could be something prosecutors in Sonoma County or Shasta County could request at sentencing if PG&E is convicted.

Bridgett indicated she will seek restitution and court-ordered remedial measures if the utility is convicted.

If PG&E were to be found guilty of charges related to the Kincaid and Zogg fires, and prosecutors requested probation at sentencing, the court might have trouble granting the request, if the utility were to refuse probation due to a state law loophole.

In 2019, Plains All American Pipeline was able to avoid probation after it was criminally convicted of negligence in a Santa Barbara oil spill in 2015.

Under the Penal Code, according to Senior Deputy District Attorney Kevin Weichbrod, who prosecuted the case, defendants have a right to serve a prison or jail sentence instead of probation.

But a corporation cannot be jailed, so in the pipeline case, the judge was unable to force probation on the company since there was no case law that allowed for such a maneuver.

“One of the issues is that it is fairly recent that we’ve started doing prosecutions against corporations or partnerships or other entities. And so I think that the code section just didn’t anticipate those types of prosecutions,” Weichbrod said. “Something that was brought up by the court in that sentencing hearing was: Is there anything else that the court can do? Can they revoke the corporate charter or something like that in a quasi-prison sentence? And the judge, in our case, obviously didn’t want to kind of stand out on a limb and do something that dramatic, but that’s certainly something that other courts may look at.”

Santa Barbara County District Attorney Joyce E. Dudley added, “Legislation should be implemented to allow the court to either be able to impose probation on a corporate defendant or revoke their corporate charter for a period of time as a quasi-prison sentence for a corporation.”