PacifiCorp now wants protection from fire victims
November 10, 2023
Oregon’s second-largest electricity provider wants state regulators to protect it from the costs of future lawsuits seeking reimbursement from destructive wildfires.
The Oregonian reported that PacifiCorp’s request to the Public Utility Commission (PUC) was made just months after the utility lost a massive lawsuit in Multnomah County over its negligence in Oregon’s catastrophic Labor Day fires of 2020. More lawsuits are still pending with plaintiffs seeking billions of dollars in damages. In June after the trial, the company wanted ratepayers to pay for $90 million a jury found PacifiCorp liable for, after it had started numerous fires and burned miles of forest and thousands of homes in the 2020 fires. The jury in Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland found PacifiCorp — which owns Pacific Power — liable for four of the devastating Labor Day 2020 fires that burned about 2,500 properties in western Oregon.
