The article states that there is roughly $15 billion in damages from this fire. PG&E’s assets and wildfire insurance are worth ~$5B.
That said, if it were proven that PG&E were directly liable for this fire, how would that play out?
That said, if it were proven that PG&E were directly liable for this fire, how would that play out?
That said, as a private citizen I don't see how a person starting a fire accidentally (not sure how you prove malice if a transformer fails?) could be held liable for all the property damage further downstream. That's what private insurance is for.
Note also: PG&E is already being sued for allegedly causing last fall's devastating fires in northern California. That plus damages for this year's fires is very likely to force them into bankruptcy.
Hence a plunging stock price as everyone rushes to get out while they still can.
What is the most efficient state run operation? What is the least efficient state run operation?
What is the most efficient market driven operation? What is the least efficient market driven operation?
My sense is that in general a market driven operation will be run more efficiently and practically than a state run operation. There may be particular instances of efficient state run operations that exist in the United States but there are always particular instances of efficient market driven operations too. Taken as a whole, we should skew towards market driven solutions.
What we have here is a decision between one group of accountants getting electricity users to pay, vs a different group of accountants getting taxpayers to pay. The fraction of the population that are net positive taxpayers is much smaller than the fraction of the population that uses electricity, so in a democracy it would be surprising NOT to see the people deciding the few people who are net positive taxpayers will get the bill. The large chunk of the population that pay electric bills while being net negative taxpayers are not going to volunteer to pay more.
Although, it's debatable how avoidable starting fires is in the bone-dry tinderbox of 21st-century California, even if you stick closely to best practices.
Also, people often attribute exclusively to government a class of dysfunctions or inefficiencies that have virtually nothing to do with an organization's ownership structure, but have a great deal to do with management structures typical of large organizations (e.g. wasteful spending due to "use it or lose it" budgets). With respect to these problems, I would be very surprised if substituting public vs. private does anything other than change minor details of how they manifest.
As it always plays out: regular people will only sue via class action lawsuit, meaning there will be a settlement that is a fraction of the damage. The lawsuit with the state as plaintiff will drag on until either a settlement or the statute of limitation is reached.
Businesses and individuals (and public agencies like cities, counties, and special districts) with losses, especially of structures, will in many cases be insured; direct action lawsuits, or the threat thereof, to force a substantially full settlement, to recover from liable parties are a big part of what insurance companies do, and the nature of insurance companies is that each will have much larger losses than any individual, and much more motivation to aggressively pursue them; there may still be settlements that are less than would be recovered in a final judgement (to the extent that time value of money and risk and reduced litigation costs make that a winning proposition), but nowhere near as small a fraction as is typical in a class action.
> The lawsuit with the state as plaintiff will drag on until either a settlement or the statute of limitation is reached.
That's not how statutes of limitations work. They run from the event giving rise to the cause of action to the moment the action is filed; once the case is filed within the statute of limitations, how long it runs is immaterial.
The one with Tesla I am familiar with ran to filing action. The investigation found previously-unknown potential violations which were too far in the past for CalOSHA to initiate legal action regarding them.
Do you have a source for something else?