南加州爱迪生以闲置输电塔抗辩洛杉矶山火赔偿责任

Southern California Edison (EIX) is urging a judge not to find the company liable for property damages from a 2025 Los Angeles wildfire in part because the transmission tower where the fire allegedly ignited had been idle since 1971 and no longer qualifies as public infrastructure that triggers the state's strict liability rule for utilities, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
The utility faces lawsuits from more than 10K plaintiffs alleging its equipment started the fire, which killed 19 people, destroyed more than 9.4K buildings, devastated the middle-class neighborhood of Altadena, and burned 14K acres in the surrounding area.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge has set an August 11 hearing on a request by insurance companies for a ruling without a jury trial that SoCal Edison (EIX) must pay compensation for property losses under the legal doctrine of inverse condemnation, where a utility is deemed responsible for losses if its equipment is found to have started a fire, regardless of fault.
California law limits inverse condemnation to property serving a public use, and SoCal Edison (EIX) argues the facility falls outside that definition in part because it served no customers at the time the fire started.
The insurance companies, joined by Los Angeles County and other public entities, argued in their own filing that the evidence leaves no real dispute, pointing to two electrical faults recorded on Edison's (EIX) own equipment on the night of the fire, matched with two arc flashes captured on camera at the tower where the blaze allegedly started.