Legal Claims and Deadlines for Palisades Wildfire Losses

Attorney Answer

You likely do have claims — and for a Pacific Palisades property owner the most urgent deadline is not the lawsuit deadline but the government claim you may have to present first.

Pacific Palisades is served by a municipal utility, and a municipal utility is a public entity. Claims against a public entity must be presented to it before any suit is filed, and Cal. Gov't Code § 911.2(a) sets the periods. A claim relating to death, injury to person, or injury to personal property or growing crops must be presented not later than six months after accrual. A claim relating to any other cause of action — which includes damage to real property, the loss that dominates a wildfire case — must be presented not later than one year after accrual. A homeowner therefore has two different presentation deadlines running simultaneously: the shorter one for injuries and for contents, the longer one for the house and land. Anyone who reads only "six months" and concludes their property claim is dead has been misinformed.

The deadlines for actually filing suit are separate and longer. Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 335.1 gives two years for personal injury or wrongful death; Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 338(b) gives three years for trespass upon or injury to real property. These run alongside the presentation requirement, not instead of it, and satisfying one does not satisfy the other.

On the theory of liability, California law is unusually favourable to fire victims. In Pacific Bell Telephone Co. v. Southern California Edison Co., 208 Cal.App.4th 1400 (2012), the Court of Appeal held that Edison, a privately owned utility, may be liable for inverse condemnation, reasoning that a property owner damaged by utility operations suffers a disproportionate share of the cost of the public improvement regardless of whether the utility is governmentally or privately owned. The court also rejected Edison's argument for a reasonableness standard and agreed that a strict liability standard governs. More recently, in Simple Avo Paradise Ranch, LLC v. Southern Cal. Edison Co., 102 Cal.App.5th 281 (2024), arising from the 2017 Thomas Fire, the court affirmed that Edison may be held liable in inverse condemnation and rejected its argument that inverse condemnation reaches only government-owned entities. The practical significance for you is that under inverse condemnation a property owner does not have to prove ordinary negligence — and a municipal utility is a public entity in its own right, so the theory reaches it directly. The presentation requirement still applies.

One thing to set aside: the California Wildfire Fund created by AB 1054, Cal. Pub. Util. Code § 3280 et seq., is not something you apply to. It is a utility solvency and ratepayer cost-recovery mechanism administered through the CPUC, it covers only the participating investor-owned utilities, and it would not apply to a fire caused by a municipal utility. Do not treat it as a compensation route.

What you can do

1. Preserve everything now: photographs before and after, your policy and declarations page, every communication with your insurer, receipts for temporary housing and replacement necessities. 2. File and pursue your own homeowner's insurance claim if you have not. It is separate from any claim against whoever caused the fire, and it does not replace one. 3. Find out which utility's equipment is implicated in your area. That single fact determines whether you are on the government-claim track or suing a private utility. 4. Present a government claim to the responsible public entity, and present it for both categories of loss — the personal injury and contents claim and the real property claim — since Cal. Gov't Code § 911.2(a) puts them in different buckets. 5. If you think a presentation period may already have run, raise it with a lawyer immediately. There is a statutory procedure for applying for permission to present a late claim, and it carries its own deadline. 6. Keep a running record of economic losses: temporary housing, lost income, out-of-pocket costs, and destroyed contents. 7. Do not sign any release in exchange for a quick payment from any entity.

⏱ Time limits apply. The government claim comes first. Cal. Gov't Code § 911.2(a) requires presentation within six months of accrual for death, personal injury, and personal property, and within one year for other causes of action including damage to real property. Missing presentation can bar the lawsuit entirely, long before the two-year period in Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 335.1 or the three-year period in Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 338(b) would expire. Which deadline attaches to which of your losses, and when each began to run, depends on your specific facts — have them confirmed now.