O'Melveny & Myers, one of America's biggest law firms, represented PG&E for decades.
When PG&E committed crimes that destroyed a town (later resulting in 84 felony manslaughter convictions,) the new Governor hired lawyers to help.
He hired... O'Melveny:
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Brandon Rittiman
@BrandonRittiman
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ABC10 investigative reporter. Creator, FIRE - POWER - MONEY.
Email: brittiman@abc10.com
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Follow my colleague Tyler Horst, who’s in court for #PGEManslaughterHearing this week:
The judge dropped the air contaminants misdemeanors yesterday, but the preliminary hearing proceeds on reckless arson / manslaughter felonies and related #ZoggFire ch…
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Somehow, #ABC10 is the only news organization in the #ShastaCounty courtroom for the #PGEManslaughterHearing.
I'm posting updates from this afternoon's session here:
#ZoggFire #FirePowerMoney #PGE #ShastaCounty #Wildfire #Crime #Courts #ABC10
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#PGEManslaughterHearing:
Loomis & his team interacted with PG&E's federal monitor, part of the company's probation for 6 federal felonies from the deadly San Bruno gas explosion.
Federal law caps probation at 5 years.
"In these five years, PG&E has go…
We begin post-lunch #PGEManslaughterHearing with another PG&E employee: Ken Loomis, who is a manager for "operational excellence" of tree work. He's an arborist.
His name came up this morning around the issue of internal confusion at PG&E about whether …
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Somehow, #ABC10 is the only news organization in the Shasta County courtroom for the #PGEManslaughterHearing.
I'll post updates from this afternoon's session here.
PG&E is charged with 31 crimes, including the manslaughter of 4 people in the 2020 #Zogg…
PG&E lawyers liken CAPs to a "suggestion box"-- Bakker agrees it's like that.
Some cleanup questions.
He says the power line that sparked the #ZoggFire is a "high risk circuit."
And with that, #PGEManslaughterHearing is heading to lunch.
#FirePowerMo…
This concern about the level of tree inspections made its way into an internal PG&E process called a CAP.
"To the best of your knowledge, nothing was done to address these CAPs?"
"Correct," Bakker says.
PG&E attys now have him on cross in the #PGEMans…
In #PGEManslaughterHearing, Bakker is being asked about his work reviewing concerns that PG&E's procedures for doing doing level 1 (walk-by) vs. level 2 (360-degree) tree inspections weren't clear.
In 2019, Bakker was in charge of the company's procedur…
Testimony is moving a more quickly on Day 5 of #PGEManslaughterHearing, so I’m behind on photos:
Witnesses so far today in the #ZoggFire case:
Michael Koffman, PG&E
Kelly Fredrickson, PG&E
Joshua Cannon, tree contractor
Adam Bakker, PG&E (on stand n…
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PG&E employee Adam Bakker, who's worked there since 2004, is our next witness in the #PGEManslaughterHearing.
He has a long background in tree work, going back to the 1990's.
He's now describing PG&E's knowledge of which tree species cause more outages…
On cross exam in #PGEManslaughterHearing, Cannon tells PG&E lawyers that if he knew back then who would do the next annual patrol, he would have been less concerned:
"If I had known that Steve Morefield was the one taking over, I probably would have rea…
When a PG&E employee told him the utility was calling off tree cutting in the post-Carr Fire area, "I expressed disbelief," Cannon says in #PGEManslaughterHearing.
"It seemed out of character," he adds. "I thought that it was irresponsible to do that."
…
Cannon asked to be transferred in November 2018.
"My house burned down," Cannon says in the #PGEManslaughterHearing.
He lived in Paradise.
The 2018 Camp Fire (which was started by PG&E's criminal negligence) burned his home, so he asked to be transfer…
Joshua Cannon is our next #PGEManslaughterHearing witness.
He's a tree contractor. In 2018, he worked for PG&E contractor Mountain G Enterprises-- who's his employer today.
He a deputy director for tree work along PG&E's power lines, including the ones…
In PG&E's federal probation, a judge found that PG&E had marked this gray pine as a hazard in 2018 but then never followed up to cut it down.
It fell on a PG&E power line in a September 2020 windstorm, sparking the #ZoggFire that killed 4 people.
These…
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A lot of back-and-forth between the DA and Kelly Fredrickson in the #PGEManslaughterHearing on PG&E's decision to combine the CEMA (post-fire) tree inspection and the routine patrol: doing 2 inspections at once.
She sees it as doing two jobs at once.
D…
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#PGEManslaughterHearing
Kelly Fredrickson is asked if she thought PG&E's tree inspectors walked 360-degrees around "all trees" tall / close enough to strike the power lines?
"If it was necessary," she says. "I'm getting hung up on the word 'all.'"
Ask…
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2nd #PGEManslaughterHearing witness of the day is up: Kelly Fredrickson, a PG&E supervisor in the work verification program.
She's been at PG&E since 2007.
In 2018, 2 years before the #ZoggFire, she was a program manager-- overseeing PG&E contractors w…
#PGEManslaughterHearing
DA asks Koffman: "Did you tell anyone specifically" to look for green paint and be especially careful to deal with the unworked post-Carr trees?
No, Koffman says.
He adds that looking for painted trees is a "standing" expectati…
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Judge sustains the objection.
More PG&E objections fly as Frazer continues in #PGEManslaughterHearing, with judge stopping a couple of questions that he says go beyond the scope of redirect.
The DA asks Koffman whether anyone warned him he was making a…
Koffman is back on the stand in #PGEManslaughterHearing.
The judge asks the first question, trying to clear up what "HN" stands for on a pre - #ZoggFire checklist admitted yesterday.
"Hazard Notification," Koffman says.
DA team now questioning him abo…
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#PGEManslaughterHearing:
Judge Boeckman says the DA has given enough detail to satisfy him that all 3 witnesses can come in.
The judge is now telling the DA team he'd like them to get quickly to the meat of the testimony because he feels we're behind s…
Much shorter than the detail offered by Frazer about these planned #PGEManslaughterHearing witnesses:
Adam Bakker & John Daubenspeck were involved in managing trees for PG&E.
Charles Filmer is a subject matter expert who knows about PG&E's regulatory i…
Judge Boeckman says the preliminary hearing is not the way to secure interviews with witnesses who weren't willing to talk, that the DA team needs to know what they expect to elicit from the testimony.
(The #PGEManslaughterHearing is for DA present evid…
#PGEManslaughterHearing:
Before Koffman comes out, PG&E's defense team raises an issue: they're challenging three of the DA's witnesses on the grounds the DA hasn't previously interviewed them.
This came up earlier and Judge Bradley Boeckman said he wa…
Yesterday's #PGEManslaughterHearing session ended with Michael Koffman still on the witness stand.
He's the first PG&E employee called to testify, having overseen PG&E's tree inspection contractors on Zogg Mine Rd in the 2 years before the #ZoggFire.
F…
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PG&E, the nation's largest electric #monopoly, is charged with the felony manslaughter of four people in the 2020 #ZoggFire:
Feyla McLeod
Alaina Rowe McLeod
Karin King
Kenneth Vossen
The #PGEManslaughterHearing enters DAY 5 today in Shasta County, w…
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#PGEManslaughterHearing has been silent for a couple of minutes as Koffman reviews his sworn statement. He wants to read it before answering whether it's an accurate copy of the declaration he gave Alsup.
After that review, he says he believes it's accu…
#PGEManslaughterHearing:
Koffman is being shown text messages between him and other PG&E workers.
The texts (which we can't yet see) mention a meeting and discuss how the trees have been marked on Zogg Mine Rd.
He testifies that he doesn't remember wh…
#PGEManslaughterHearing:
The post-Carr inspections are believed to have resulted in the #ZoggFire tree being tagged for removal.
Koffman says he decided to leave some marked trees to be "picked up" by #PGE "routine" tree work later.
"It likely would h…
The tree that hit power lines in 2020 and sparked the #ZoggFire was in the footprint of the 2018 Carr Fire.
In #PGEManslaughterHearing, PG&E manager Michael Koffman says he would have expected to see any fire-damaged trees in the area removed, based on …
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In the wake of the 2018 #CarrFire, Koffman says PG&E brought in tree contractors-- but PG&E was "unsure" of their qualifications.
Koffman says the contractors were given "binary" instructions-- to take out trees with fire damage.
He says there were may…
Here's a better quality image of the evidence we saw this morning in the #PGEManslaughterHearing - a LiDAR reconstruction of the #ZoggFire origin point, made as part of the CAL FIRE arson investigation.
The red tree is the reconstructed position of the …
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We're back in court for Day 4 of the #PGEManslaughterHearing.
PG&E is charged in the 2020 #ZoggFire, which killed 4 people.
PG&E atty Jonathan Kravis says the DA changed the order of witnesses, which may leave PG&E unprepared to examine some of them.
…
#PGEManslaughterHearing heads to lunch break.
Koffman's direct exam to resume when we come back at 1:30pm.
I'll start a new thread then.
#ZoggFire
#FirePowerMoney #California #PGE #ShastaCounty #Wildfire #Corporations #Utilities #Crime #Courts #ABC10
#PGEManslaughterHearing:
As a supervising program manager for vegetation, Koffman says he was "responsible for oversight of contractors doing work in the field" for PG&E. He had that title 2016-2019.
"My desk was in the Chico office," he says. He was r…
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Muegge is done for the day, but may be recalled to the stand if needed.
Looks like we'll at least get one more #PGEManslaughterHearing witness started before lunch: Michael Koffman, who's the first PG&E employee to testify.
Before working at PG&E, he d…
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#PGEManslaughterHearing: PG&E tree inspection contractor John Muegge is looking at this photo from his declaration to US Dist Judge William Alsup during PG&E's probation. (It's not being shown to the court gallery.)
He says again what he told Alsup-- he…
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More on the doing-two-patrols-at-once item raised earlier today in #PGEManslaughterHearing:
A routine patrol has a broader scope than a CEMA (post-fire) patrol, Muegge agrees on cross.
Routine patrol inspections should encompass everything that would b…