LADWP Lawsuit: Empty Reservoir and Billions After Palisades Fire

Thousands of Pacific Palisades property owners have joined a mass tort lawsuit against the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power over the Palisades Fire, alleging that an empty reservoir, energized power lines during a red flag windstorm, and altered maintenance records turned a brush fire into the most destructive urban blaze in Los Angeles history. In February 2026, a Superior Court judge rejected LADWP’s attempt to throw the case out, clearing the way for claims that could cost the utility billions.

What the Lawsuit Claims LADWP Did Wrong

The lead case is Grigsby, et al. v. City of Los Angeles, Case No. 25STCV00832, pending in Los Angeles County Superior Court before Judge Samantha Jessner.¹²³⁴ The complaint rests on three main theories.

The Empty Santa Ynez Reservoir

The 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir, the terminal water supply for Pacific Palisades, was completely empty on the night the fire swept through. LADWP had drained it beginning in late February 2024 after a tear in its floating cover grew to roughly 100 feet, allowing contaminants into the drinking water. The state Division of Drinking Water rejected LADWP’s proposal to keep it in service, and the reservoir was fully drained by early April 2024.⁵

A repair contract worth about $130,000 was not awarded until mid-2024, and the contractor could not begin work until late January or early February 2025, after the fire. The reservoir was not repaired until March 2025 and did not come back online until June.⁶⁷ Plaintiffs say the reservoir’s absence left the neighborhood with only about 3 million gallons of storage, roughly 2.5% of area capacity, and that a backup facility, the Palisades Reservoir, had been out of service since 2013.⁸⁵

The practical consequences were severe. LADWP CEO Janisse Quiñones acknowledged demand during the fire reached four times the normal volume. Three one-million-gallon tanks in the upper Palisades ran dry by the early morning of January 8 after their pumping stations lost suction, first responders reported low hydrant pressure around 6:30 p.m. on January 7, and by January 9 firefighters had stopped using hydrants entirely.⁶⁷

Energized Power Lines

The second category of claims targets LADWP’s electrical system. Plaintiffs allege the utility left overhead power lines energized through one of the most severe Santa Ana wind events in recent memory, despite a National Weather Service “Particularly Dangerous Condition — Red Flag Warning.”⁹ An energized electrical tower near the Temescal Water Tank was knocked down at roughly 10:30 p.m. on January 7, which the complaint describes as a “second ignition” point. Photographs in the complaint show snapped wooden H-frame poles and lines on the ground with flames spreading nearby shortly after.⁸

A separate dispute involves the Royal-Monte Grande 1 Line, a 34.5 kV sub-transmission line that passes roughly a quarter-mile from the suspected origin and was brought back online in 2024 after years of being de-energized. LADWP initially told the Washington Post the line was not energized on the day of the fire and had not been for five years. The agency later corrected that statement and acknowledged the line was in fact energized when the fire broke out.¹⁰¹¹

Alleged Record Alteration

An amended complaint filed in July 2025 added what plaintiffs call a “massive cover-up.” The lawsuit alleges that on January 29, 2025, three weeks after the fire, an LADWP technician retroactively changed an entry in the Energy Control Center operations log. The original entry reportedly showed the technician arriving at the relevant substation around 6:00 to 6:18 p.m. on January 7; the amended entry puts arrival at roughly 1:45 to 1:47 p.m. Plaintiffs say the change was meant to hide a multi-hour delay in shutting off power to Pacific Palisades.¹²¹³

Plaintiffs also allege that LADWP quietly changed its internal inspection policy for the Santa Ynez Reservoir in November 2024, extending the required inspection cycle from monthly to every three years. They claim the required annual diver inspections were last performed in 2021.¹²

Federal investigators have traced the fire itself to arson, with Jonathan Rinderknecht indicted in October 2025 for allegedly igniting the earlier Lachman Fire that smoldered underground before resurfacing on January 7.¹⁴ The civil case against LADWP proceeds on a separate track, because plaintiffs argue the utility’s failures are what turned a containable fire into a catastrophe, regardless of who started it.

How LADWP Is Defending the Case

LADWP denies the central allegations. On causation, the utility says its monitoring devices recorded no faults on the Royal-Monte Grande 1 Line near the reported ignition time, and that the ATF has not indicated LADWP equipment was involved in starting the fire.¹⁵ It says the line was manually de-energized on its Encino side by approximately 2:15 p.m. on January 7 and that automatic reclosing had been blocked the day before as a precaution.¹⁶

On the operations log, LADWP calls the fabrication allegation false. The January 29 amendment, the utility says, was a routine update adding contextual details drawn from timestamped audio recordings covering 1:47 p.m. to 6:07 p.m. on January 7, and plaintiffs’ counsel presented a “cropped” version of the log to make the edits look suspicious.¹² On reservoir inspections, LADWP says monthly inspections continued until the facility went out of service, with diver inspections performed in 2020, 2021, and 2023 (repairs in 2022 made that year’s dive unnecessary). It also argues that “long settled law and precedent prevent water utilities, and their rate payers, from being liable for wildfire losses,” and that no urban water system is built to fight a wind-driven fire of this speed and scale.¹⁷

A state report partly supports LADWP on the reservoir’s practical impact. The California Natural Resources Agency found the system’s main supply line had a maximum capacity of 37,000 gallons per minute; a full Santa Ynez Reservoir could have added about 5,500 gallons per minute, a 15% increase, which the report concluded would still have been insufficient to meet demand from hydrant use and water leaking from destroyed structures.⁷

Why the February 2026 Ruling Matters

On February 19, 2026, Judge Jessner overruled LADWP’s demurrer and allowed claims for inverse condemnation, dangerous condition of public property, and public nuisance to go forward. The inverse condemnation ruling is the most consequential piece. Under California law, inverse condemnation lets property owners recover damages when a public entity’s infrastructure causes or substantially contributes to property damage, and negligence does not have to be proved. Judge Jessner concluded that California law permits property and business owners to pursue claims that LADWP’s draining of the reservoir and the resulting loss of hydrant pressure were a substantial cause of their losses.¹⁸

Plaintiffs point to Itani v. Yorba Linda Water District as a model. In that 2008 case, the water district was ordered to pay nearly $70 million under inverse condemnation after fire damaged its system and interrupted hydrant flow, even though a court found the district was not negligent and did not start the fire.¹⁹ The decision is non-precedential but has shaped similar claims in later California wildfire litigation.²⁰

How Fire Victims Can Join and Where the Case Stands

Robertson & Associates, LLP (led by Alexander “Trey” Robertson IV) and Foley Bezek Behle & Curtis, LLP (led by Roger Behle and Robert Curtis) serve as liaison counsel for the plaintiffs.²¹ A revised master complaint was filed on December 1, 2025, and three case management orders have been entered, the most recent on March 26, 2026. No trial date has been publicly set.¹

Victims who have not yet filed should be aware of the Government Claims Act’s six-month deadline for filing claims against public entities. A separate class action by the Consumer Law Group of California seeks declaratory relief asking the court to confirm that this deadline does not bar victims who have not yet filed individual claims, but anyone considering a claim should consult counsel promptly rather than rely on that pending ruling.²²