Twenty-Five Pacific Palisades Fire Victims Sue City of Los Angeles and LADWP for Failure to Maintain Water Supply and Fire Hydrant System that Caused “Inherent Danger and Risk of Fire”

LOS ANGELES, March 07, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Twenty-five Pacific Palisades fire victims have filed an inverse condemnation lawsuit today in the Los Angeles Superior Court against the City of Los Angeles and the embattled Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) for the failure to maintain an adequate water supply and fire hydrant system.

“The Palisades Fire has caused untold devastation, destroying my clients’

homes, businesses, and all or most of their personal property. LADWP and the City of Los Angeles had a duty to properly construct, inspect, maintain and operate its water supply system. The system necessarily failed, and this failure was a substantial factor in causing my clients to suffer catastrophic losses,” stated Peter McNulty of the McNulty Law Firm, attorney for the fire victims.

The suit states that the City of Los Angeles and LADWP’s “facilities, reservoir, water supply system, hydrants, infrastructure and other public improvements, as deliberately designed and constructed, presented an inherent danger and risk of fire to private property,” and points out that the “Santa Ynez Reservoir, the reservoir that services Pacific Palisades, was completely offline and emptied before the fires erupted in the area, leaving fire crews little-to-no water to fight the Palisades Fire.”

McNulty added, “As The New York Times put it, the Palisades Fire ‘expose[d] a web of governments, weak by design.’ The Palisades Fire was an inescapable and unavoidable consequence of the water supply system servicing areas in and around Pacific Palisades as it was horribly planned, constructed, and maintained.”

Other Pacific Palisades Fire victims are welcome to contact the McNulty Law Firm directly at 1-213-329-4222.