The City of Los Angeles is making a late legal push to pull the State of California into the financial fallout from the Palisades fire, asking a court this week to make state agencies share any civil liability tied to the blaze. The new filing, submitted by the City Attorney’s office, denies that the city is liable while urging the court to spread any judgments or settlements across multiple public entities. In practical terms, it squarely raises the question of who actually pays if survivors and property owners win in court.
The cross-complaint, filed late Thursday by City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto’s office, names the State of California, the Natural Resources Agency, the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy as entities that should share in any potential payouts, according to NBC4. The city is asking the court to ensure that any resulting liability or payments are “fairly and equitably apportioned among the parties.” The filing also notes that Los Angeles submitted its own claim for damages to the state last July and says that claim has still not been answered.
What Judges And Lawyers Are Arguing
Both the city and the state have filed demurrers seeking to toss out the victims’ lawsuits at the starting gate, arguing the complaints do not clear the legal threshold required to hold government agencies liable, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. Those threshold motions have largely frozen broad discovery and shifted the fight to procedural issues, including whether government claims were filed on time and what statutory immunities might shield agencies from suit. Plaintiffs’ attorneys counter that depositions and internal records are essential to show how decisions by public officials may have contributed to the disaster.
Legal And Procedural Stakes
Under the Government Claims Act, most potential plaintiffs must first file a claim with each public agency within six months before they can sue, and judges will now decide whether missed deadlines or immunity defenses block some or all of the cases, the Daily Journal reports. The city’s cross-complaint repeats its denial of liability but tries to keep an allocation mechanism in place so that, if plaintiffs ultimately prevail, any payments can be shifted or shared among state and local defendants. For homeowners and insurers, those seemingly technical rulings could effectively determine whether the financial burden lands mostly on city taxpayers, the state budget, or a mix of public agencies…