By Hudson Sangree

Pacific Gas and Electric said Monday it will plead guilty to 85 felonies stemming from the Camp Fire in November 2018, including 84 charges of involuntary manslaughter, a subset of homicide involving criminally negligent behavior.

“Today’s charges underscore the reality of all that was lost, and we hope that accepting those charges helps bring more certainty to the path forward so we can get victims paid fairly and quickly,” CEO Bill Johnson said in a statement.

The plea deal comes days after California Gov. Gavin Newsom agreed to drop his objections to PG&E’s reorganization plan with the caveat that the utility could be put up for sale if a federal bankruptcy judge doesn’t approve the plan by June 30. (See PG&E Deal with Gov. Allows for Utility’s Sale.)

The Camp Fire was the deadliest and most destructive in state history. It started when a worn C-hook on a transmission tower broke, releasing a high-voltage line that ignited dry vegetation, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

PG&E’s faulty maintenance of its century-old Caribou-Palermo line was cited as the cause of the equipment failure. (See Cal Fire Pins Deadly Camp Fire on PG&E.)

Within hours after ignition, flames raced through the rugged forested countryside of the Sierra Nevada foothills and into the town of Paradise, with a population of 27,000. It destroyed more than 14,000 homes and 500 businesses. The death toll from the fire was 86, Cal Fire said.

One person committed suicide as flames approached, and another died from a heart attack while fleeing the blaze, law enforcement officials have said. PG&E was not charged in those deaths.

PG&E will also plead guilty to a felony count of unlawfully starting a fire with enhancements for causing great bodily injury to multiple people, for injuring firefighters and for burning numerous structures, according to the plea agreement filed by the Butte County District Attorney’s Office.

The utility agreed to pay the maximum fine of nearly $3.5 million and to reimburse the prosecutor’s office $500,000 for its investigation, which resulted in a grand jury indictment of PG&E, the DA’s office said. PG&E has cooperated with law enforcement and accepted criminal responsibility, prosecutors said.

Nothing prevents crime victims from seeking restitution from PG&E, but the utility told the federal bankruptcy judge overseeing its Chapter 11 case that it hopes any payments will come from the $13.5 billion trust it already plans to establish to compensate wildfire victims. (See Federal Judge to Review PG&E’s Wildfire Plan.)

PG&E filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2019 as it faced an estimated in $30 billion in liabilities from the Camp Fire and a series of devastating blazes in Northern California wine country in October 2017.

Butte County District Attorney Michael Ramsey cited PG&E’s reorganization plan, which the utility is trying to have approved by the end of June, as a motivating factor for the plea deal. (See Judge OKs PG&E’s $23B Plan to Exit Bankruptcy.)

There is a “significant risk that a further criminal prosecution of the company at this time could jeopardize the company’s ability to pay victims,” Ramsey wrote in his court filing. PG&E has also committed to paying local governments and agencies $1 billion, including $270 million to the town of Paradise and $252 million to Butte County, the prosecutor said.

Prior Felonies and Probation

The plea deal is still subject to approval by state and federal courts. If that occurs, PG&E will have been found guilty of 101 felonies in the past four years.

Jurors in August 2016 convicted the utility of six felonies related to the San Bruno gas pipeline explosion in 2010, including pipeline safety violations and obstructing a federal investigator. The disaster killed eight people and burned down part of a suburban San Francisco neighborhood.

The company remains on criminal probation in the case, and new convictions could violate the terms of that probation. Federal Judge William Alsup has been a vocal critic of the utility at its probation hearings; whether he will impose new measures remains a question.

Stanford University law Professor Robert Weisberg, an expert in white collar crime and sentencing, said Alsup could levee additional fines or place the company in receivership, but he doubts that will happen.

“This is an unusual situation,” Weisberg said. “PG&E is already in so much trouble and involved in so many legal entanglements [that] the incremental effect of additional criminal convictions may not be so significant.”

PG&E is already facing huge financial liabilities in its nearly $60 billion bankruptcy case and has agreed to stricter oversight by the California Public Utilities Commission, including the possibility of losing its electric monopoly.

The number of manslaughter counts may be the most homicides an American corporation has ever been charged with, Weisberg said.

Another corporation might be so stigmatized by lesser criminal convictions that it would go out of business, he said. He cited the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, brought down by its wrongdoing connected to the Enron scandal in the early 2000s, including a conviction for obstruction of justice.

PG&E is different, Weisberg said. California’s largest utility is notorious for its wrongdoing over the years yet remains in business.

“Everybody now thinks of PG&E as such a feckless, pathetic entity,” he said. “This may not have as much of a punch.”