LA Residents’ Palisades Wildfire Lawsuit Includes Two Judges

The Judges

U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson, who currently sits on the Central District of California’s court, and former magistrate judge Vijay “Jay” Gandhi, who served as a magistrate judge in the same court, filed the complaint with their families in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Judge Gandhi has mediated prior fire settlements between Pacific Gas & Electric and residents. He told the Los Angeles Daily News that, “The city must stand up and claim responsibility and do right by the residents of the Palisades. And that’s why I joined this battle… the Palisades fire was a “manifestation of risks that were widely known but ignored. And the city needs to acknowledge that, because it can’t happen again.”

Gandhi will be both plaintiff and lawyer in the case.  According one of the attorneys working on the cases, the judges’ lawsuit is consolidated with more than 10 other similar cases against DWP, brought by more than 750 other residents.

Judges’ Palisades Fire Lawsuit

Their complaint alleges that the Palisades fire was caused by both LADWP’s water and power assets, specifically empty reservoirs and energized powerlines, which caused additional ignitions and fires in Pacific Palisades during a predicted Santa Ana wind event, … [which] accelerated the rapid spread of the Palisades Fire, reported The Los Angeles Times.

Also included in their complaint is a report from The Times that found the DWP’s Santa Ynez Reservoir, located in the Palisades, had been closed for months for repairs before the blaze. The complaint claims the following:

• Despite dire warnings by the National Weather Service of a ‘Particularly Dangerous Condition-Red Flag Warning,’ of ‘critical fire weather’ which had the potential for rapid fire spread and extreme fire behavior, the LADWP was unprepared for the Palisades fire.
• Most of DWP power lines remained energized during the fire, which caused more ignitions and fires in the area during a predicted Santa Ana wind, which accelerated the rapid spread of the Palisades Fire.
• DWP “knew about the significant risk wildfires posed in the event of ineffective infrastructure management, delayed repairs, unsafe equipment, and/or aging infrastructure decades before the Palisades Fire.
• Nearby reservoirs and electric lines are public necessities, and “failure of one critical infrastructure can potentially have a domino effect.”LADWP Response

The LADWP states on its website that “long settled law and precedent prevent water utilities, and their rate payers, from being liable for wildfire losses.” It dug up a 114-year-old California Supreme Court ruling stating the utility can’t be sued for not providing enough water to fight the monstrous Pacific Palisades fire because it didn’t have a contract to do so. California courts have long rejected attempts to hold water utilities liable for a failure to provide water to fight fires, absent some specific contract to do so,” wrote LADWP lawyers, and reported by Los Angeles Daily News.

One of the plaintiffs’ attorneys said the argument doesn’t make sense, especially since the utility’s own manual states the reservoir for the Pacific Palisades area was built specifically to aid fire suppression and other “customer needs.”

In January, a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman told the Washington Post that it was not their practice to maintain patrols of past fire sites, even for a few days after fires have gone cold.  And the LADWP does not shut off power to customers during dangerous winds. Its wildfire mitigation plan “determined that the adverse impact on health, safety, and quality of life of its customers outweighs the perceived benefits derived from preemptive power shut-offs.” 

However, the LADWP told The Post the lines had been de-energized for five years. Lawyers for the LADWP told the plaintiffs’ lawyers that the line had been de-energized for several years before the fire and it was energized at the time the fire ignited.

In April 2025, LADWP stated:

The water system that serves the Pacific Palisades area and all of Los Angeles met and continues to meet all fire codes for urban development and housing and was built to exceed those standards to support the community’s needs. This includes open-air reservoirs that LADWP has maintained online to support aerial firefighting, which was instrumental in providing life- and property-saving support throughout the firefighting effort.

When infrastructure is offline for maintenance or repairs it is a regular operational need of a public water system and is crucial for maintaining safe drinking water standards for the communities served by LADWP reservoirs. Our system is designed with redundancies to allow for components to be periodically taken offline—not as a flaw, but as a fundamental aspect of responsible and diligent system management.

Gov. Gavin Newsom called the lack of water “deeply troubling” and ordered an independent investigation into the LADWP’s management of the reservoir and water system. Meanwhile more residents whose homes were damaged are joining the long list of lawsuits claiming the utility mismanaged water resources and power lines.