{"id":53250,"date":"2018-02-13T12:03:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T20:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.46.6.243\/?p=53250"},"modified":"2018-02-13T12:04:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-13T20:04:00","slug":"calaveras-county-announces-it-will-sue-pge-hires-major-national-law-firm-baron-budd-to-represent-calaveras-county-taxpayers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=53250","title":{"rendered":"Calaveras County Announces It Will Sue PG&#038;E, Hires Major National Law Firm Baron &#038; Budd to Represent Calaveras County Taxpayers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>San Andreas, CA&#8230;On February 13, 2018, the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to retain the national law firm of Baron &#038; Budd and the California Fire Lawyers to initiate litigation against PG&#038;E for its role in causing the Butte Fire. The Board\u2019s decision marks the next important step towards recovering \u201cmillions upon millions of taxpayer losses\u201d from Pacific Gas &#038; Electric Co. (NYSE:  PCG) which the County of Calaveras sustained in the destructive 2015 Butte Fire.<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/CalaverasCountySeal.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"220\" height=\"218\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-23630\" srcset=\"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/CalaverasCountySeal.jpg 220w, https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/CalaverasCountySeal-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/CalaverasCountySeal-30x30.jpg 30w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 220px) 100vw, 220px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The County has been working with a premier team of top national experts to understand the total amount the County has suffered from this large-scale disaster.  Collecting numbers and supporting data in order to determine the amount of damages from a 70,000+ acre fire is a tremendous undertaking and the County and its team has calculated the County\u2019s damages, evaluated and has pursued various legal avenues to secure compensation from PG&#038;E and actively participated in confidential settlement negotiations.<\/p>\n<p>Early in recovery from the Butte Fire, the County announced that it had lost\u2014and will continue to lose\u2014tens of millions of dollars in lost taxpayer funds, damaged infrastructure, fire suppression costs, government employee overtime, emergency response and recovery efforts, injury to natural resources, and other significant losses.  Since the County will forever be scarred and socially and economically damaged, the County has worked to secure fair compensation for its residents and seek reimbursement for the damage to Calaveras County and its local infrastructure from PG&#038;E, which is responsible for this tragedy. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe County, its residents, and the taxpayers have endured devastating losses in the wake of these fires,\u201d said Board Chairman Gary Tofanelli, \u201cand this legal action is an important step towards taxpayer protection and recovery, and towards helping our communities rebuild.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The County is vigilant and working with an exceptional expert team and are determined to give the people of Calaveras the best possible chance to rebuild and recover from this devastation.  It is PG&#038;E\u2019s responsibility to make this right.<\/p>\n<p>Baron &#038; Budd, P.C. is a national law firm, retained by public entities over 425 times for litigation and trial. The California Fire Lawyers includes multiple law firms: Baron &#038; Budd, Singleton Law Firm, Thorsnes Bartolotta McGuire, Dixon Diab &#038; Chambers, and Terry Singleton, Esq., California Fire Lawyers has also been retained by the Counties of Sonoma and Napa for claims related to the wine county fires.<\/p>\n<p>For more information, please contact Baron &#038; Budd Shareholder John Fiske at Fiske@BaronBudd.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>San Andreas, CA&#8230;On February 13, 2018, the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to retain the national law firm of Baron &#038; Budd and the California Fire Lawyers to initiate litigation against PG&#038;E for its role in causing the Butte Fire. The Board\u2019s decision marks the next important step towards recovering \u201cmillions upon millions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,4,1,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-life-style","category-news","category-traffic-fire","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/CalaverasCountySeal.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}