April 12, 2019
Governor Newsom’s Strike Force report on Wildfires and Climate Change: California’s Energy Future has some good ideas but a reversal of strict liability/inverse condemnation for utility-caused fires is not one of them.
“April Maurath Sommer, a longtime defender of inverse condemnation, said the doctrine does not need to be modified. Changing inverse condemnation “is a distraction,” said Maurath Sommer, the executive director of the Wild Tree Foundation, an environmental and consumer group based in the San Francisco Bay Area. “The utilities’ negligent practices have caused these fires and that is what we’re dealing with and that is what needs to be addressed.”- Los Angles Times/San Diego Union Tribune, Mixed Reaction to Newsom’s Strike Force Report on California Wildfires read more