PG&E to plead guilty to manslaughter in California Camp Fire

[ffr]

Source: NBC News

The fire, which burned through the Sierra Nevada foothills for half a month in late 2018 was sparked by Pacific Gas and Electric Company equipment.

The utility's plea deal, which the company reached with the Butte County District Attorney's office and was made public Monday morning in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, was agreed up by PG&E and the Butte County District Attorney's Office on March 17.
<snip>

As part of the agreement, PG&E must also pay the maximum $3.5 million fine on top of $500,000 to the Butte County District Attorney Environmental and Consumer Protection Trust Fund to cover costs related to the investigation of the Camp Fire.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pg-e-plead-guilty-manslaughter-california-camp-fire-n1166471

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This is a developing story

[marble falls]

1. If I plead guilty to manslaughter I'll be going to jail. Who is PG&E sending in its place? ...

I guess corporations aren't people after all. They're better.

[MurrayDelph]

4. That's why I've been saying since Citizens United

that if corporations are people, corporations who commit malfeasance bed to be arrested and confined, all liberties suspended for a defined term.

[Auggie]

2. Should put PG&E's operational license in greater jeopardy

https://sd13.senate.ca.gov/news/2020-02-19-pge-could-lose-license-if-electricity-or-gas-system-unsafe-proposal

PG&E could lose its license to operate in California if the embattled company fails to run a safe utility and take detailed actions in the wake of a catastrophic wildfire or explosion, a top regulator has proposed.

“I am very concerned about PG&E’s pattern of safety-related failures,” Marybel Batjer, president of the powerful state Public Utilities Commission, said in comments that accompanied her proposal to rein in what a number of critics believe is PG&E’s unsafe behavior.

Among the failures raised by PG&E skeptics: a catastrophic explosion in San Bruno in 2010 that killed eight people, a fatal wildfire in Amador County and Calaveras County in 2015, a series of deadly infernos that scorched the North Bay Wine Country and nearby regions in 2017, a lethal blaze that roared through Butte County and destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018, and blunders linked to the company’s deliberate shutoffs of electricity in 2019 in a quest to forestall wildfires.

“These failures were most recently exemplified by PG&E’s management of last October’s Public Safety Power Shut-off events, which raises questions about its ability to effectively plan and execute on decisions and actions within its control,” Batjer wrote in a proposal that will be considered by the powerful five-member PUC that she leads...

[iluvtennis]

3. PG&E too big a pwerful. If needed, they'll file bankruptcy, dissolve, and spring back up under a

new name.

Utility companies

[marble falls]

5. My favorite thing from PG&E ...

[The Magistrate]

6. This Is One Of The Problems With 'Corporate Personhood', Sir

"Our modern corporations have neither souls to be damned nor bodies to be kicked."


How does one punish a corporation for murder? How is a corporation sent to jail? What action, in fact, can be taken that will not, in the case of a large corporation like this one, do harm to a great many individuals who bear not a shred of responsibility for the action being punished?

Perhaps the CEO and Board members might be made to surrender their bodies for punishment in instances of criminal malfeasance by corporations they direct. One suspects if this were the case, there would be a good deal less of it. Bear in mind, this does not suppose any direct link between these persons and the act, such as would be required to convict a human being of a crime. It is simply that the persons who direct a corporation ought to provide 'the souls to be damned and bodies to be kicked' the artificial legal construct cannot otherwise provide to the workings of justice.

[Maxheader]

7. The bastards are experienced providers of power..

Their linemen and managers should have been screaming at the top of their lungs
years before about fires starting from old hardware...lines..transformers..whatever
it was that sparked the devastation and killed so many...