The Pacific Palisades fire lawsuit is actually dozens of coordinated lawsuits, consolidated in Los Angeles Superior Court as Grigsby, et al. v. City of Los Angeles (Case No. 25STCV00832), brought by roughly 3,300 individual survivors and a growing list of institutional plaintiffs against the City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the State of California, and more than a dozen other public and private defendants. On February 19, 2026, a judge denied the city’s and state’s motions to dismiss, letting the core claims move into discovery. No trial date has been set, and no settlement framework exists.
Who Is Suing
The first complaint was filed on January 13, 2025, six days after the fire ignited, by Robertson & Associates and Foley Bezek Behle & Curtis on behalf of survivors. It alleged LADWP made a “conscious decision” not to repair the Santa Ynez Reservoir, leaving 117 million gallons of firefighting water unavailable.1PR Newswire. Survivors of the Palisades Fire File a Lawsuit Against LADWP Hundreds more followed.
The Superior Court designated Grigsby as the lead case and appointed Alexander “Trey” Robertson IV and Roger Behle Jr. as co-liaison counsel for plaintiffs.2PR Newswire. Palisades Fire Victims File Amended Complaint By early 2026 the plaintiffs’ team represented roughly 3,300 individual victims.3ABC7. New Allegations in Amended Palisades Fire Lawsuit
Institutional plaintiffs have joined too. The City of Malibu sued the State of California, the City of Los Angeles, L.A. County, LADWP, the California Department of Parks and Recreation, and two conservation agencies over what it called a “series of failures related to dangerous fire conditions, inspection, and emergency preparedness.”4Los Angeles Times. Malibu Sues California, LA, Others to Recoup Fire Losses Charter Communications (Spectrum) has filed similar claims.5NBC Los Angeles. Palisades Fire Victims Lawsuits Allowed to Proceed
In late December 2025, families of 16 people killed by the fire filed wrongful death claims, racing to meet the December 31, 2025 expiration of California Code of Civil Procedure ยง 377.34, the pilot law allowing recovery for a deceased person’s pre-death pain and suffering. Three additional families brought claims alleging that the fire’s trauma accelerated the deaths of relatives with terminal illnesses. All of those claims have been consolidated into the Grigsby master complaint.6NewsNation. Palisades Fire Wrongful Death Lawsuits7FireRescue1. Families File Suicide and Terminal Illness Death-Related Lawsuits Tied to Palisades Fire
Who Is Being Sued and What the Claims Allege
The master complaint names 18 public and private defendants.8The Hill. Lawsuit Against Los Angeles Over Palisades Fire The allegations fall into several groups.
LADWP and the City of Los Angeles
Claims against LADWP have two prongs. On water, plaintiffs allege the Santa Ynez Reservoir had been drained since February 2024 to address a tear in its floating cover and that repairs never began. When the fire hit, firefighters relied on three smaller tanks holding about one million gallons each, which ran dry by roughly 3:00 a.m. on January 8, leaving hydrants without pressure. On power, plaintiffs allege two LADWP-owned wooden utility poles snapped in high winds on January 7, dropping energized sub-transmission lines into vegetation and igniting the fire, and that the utility failed to de-energize its grid despite Red Flag warnings.9Doyle APC. Palisades Fire Class Action Complaint
LADWP disputes both. The utility says the Royal-Monte Grande 1 Line, the sub-transmission line nearest the reported origin about a quarter-mile away, recorded “no faults or anomalies near the reported time of ignition,” and that the line was manually de-energized on the Encino side at about 2:15 p.m. on January 7. LADWP also says the ATF examined the overhead equipment and did not ask that any of it be preserved.10LADWP News. LADWP Statement Regarding Palisades Fire Litigation On water, LADWP maintains the pressure loss came from unprecedented demand and system damage from the fire itself, not a supply shortage.11LADWP News. Correcting Misinformation About LADWP’s Water System
The State of California and State Parks
The State faces claims that its parks employees failed to ensure the earlier Lachman Fire, set on New Year’s Day 2025, was fully extinguished, allowing it to smolder for six days and resurge as the Palisades Fire. Plaintiffs cite texts and photographs showing that on January 2, 2025, two State Parks employees visited the burn scar and found “smoldering roots and embers.” Hours before the January 7 ignition, an employee texted colleagues: “Wow, the burn scar is doing its best Dust Bowl impression. Be safe out there.”12NewsNation. California Lawsuit Over Deadly Palisades Fires Plaintiffs also allege state parks officials restricted firefighting in certain zones to protect endangered plants.6NewsNation. Palisades Fire Wrongful Death Lawsuits
Utilities, Telecoms, and Other Private Defendants
Southern California Gas Company and its parent Sempra Energy are accused of failing to shut off natural gas lines, allegedly causing homes to explode and fueling secondary fires. The claims include inverse condemnation, negligence, trespass, and nuisance.13Manhattan Institute. Revised Individual Plaintiffs’ Master Complaint Southern California Edison faces claims that its wooden power poles caught fire, broke, and fell onto homes without required protective wrapping. AT&T, Frontier, and Charter are accused of overloading LADWP poles with equipment, causing them to snap. The Getty Villa is named for allegedly failing to clear overgrown brush on its property border. The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District is accused of shutting off its water supply as the fire reached the Las Flores Canyon community.14Daily News. Getty Villa, Several Others Added as Defendants to Palisades Fire Lawsuit
The February 2026 Ruling and the City’s Cross-Complaint
On February 19, 2026, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Samantha Jessner denied the City of Los Angeles’s and the State of California’s requests to dismiss the lawsuits. She allowed claims to proceed under a California law governing a utility’s failure to supply sufficient water, though she granted the State’s request to dismiss two narrower causes of action related to overgrown vegetation on state property.5NBC Los Angeles. Palisades Fire Victims Lawsuits Allowed to Proceed15Bloomberg. LA Fire Victims Suing City, Utility for Billions Win Major Ruling
Two weeks earlier, on February 5, 2026, the City of Los Angeles filed a cross-complaint seeking to force the State of California and its agencies to share financial responsibility if the city is ultimately found liable. The city denied the allegations in the master complaint while asking the court to ensure “any liability or payments are fairly and equitably apportioned.”16NBC Los Angeles. LA Asks Court to Spread Liability for Palisades Fire
Evidence Disputes
An amended complaint accused LADWP of altering a computer log 22 days after the fire. Plaintiffs say an entry documenting when a technician arrived at a substation to shut off power was changed from 6:18 p.m. to 1:47 p.m., masking a four-hour delay in de-energizing the grid. LADWP calls the change a routine administrative update based on audio recordings and says plaintiffs cropped the log to manufacture the appearance of a cover-up.3ABC7. New Allegations in Amended Palisades Fire Lawsuit
A separate fight involves the State’s document production. Plaintiffs allege California State Parks failed three times to comply with a court order requiring disclosure of employee texts and emails, and they asked a judge to appoint an independent forensic expert to extract messages directly from employees’ phones. California State Parks said it “has and will continue to comply with all court orders surrounding discovery.” A hearing on the motion was set for May 20, 2026.17Yahoo News. Palisades Fire Attorneys Want Independent Forensic Review12NewsNation. California Lawsuit Over Deadly Palisades Fires
Cases Filed Outside the Coordinated Litigation
Several suits stand apart from Grigsby.
- On April 16, 2025, Quinn Emanuel filed on behalf of 12 senior homeowners, including a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor and a former Navy pilot, alleging the city and LADWP made a “conscious decision not to repair critical infrastructure,” citing two empty reservoirs and over 1,000 broken hydrants citywide.18Quinn Emanuel. Quinn Emanuel Palisades Fire Lawsuit
- On December 12, 2025, attorney Mark Geragos filed Aurora Point LLC’s suit against Mayor Karen Bass, the City of Los Angeles, and L.A. County, alleging Bass left the country for a diplomatic trip to Ghana while the city burned and that her office ignored National Weather Service warnings.19NBC Los Angeles. Palisades Fire Lawsuit, Geragos
- On July 7, 2025, a $10 billion class action was filed against the City of Los Angeles and five other government entities, framing the response as “failures of epic proportions.”20Smart Cities Dive. $10B Lawsuit Targets LA Over Epic Failures in Palisades Fire
- In February 2026, former Fire Chief Kristin Crowley filed a whistleblower suit alleging Mayor Bass orchestrated her removal to silence her warnings about budget cuts and staffing shortages, and that the Bass administration sought to alter the official after-action report. The city said the lawsuit “has no merit” and cited Crowley’s failure to deploy available firefighters.21Los Angeles Times. Fired LA Fire Chief Crowley Sues Over Dismissal
The Water-System Dispute in Context
The reservoir and hydrant claims are the emotional center of the litigation, and the technical picture is contested. A November 2025 state report concluded that even if the Santa Ynez Reservoir had been full, the hydrants still could not have maintained adequate pressure, because urban water systems are not built to supply the flow rates a wind-driven wildfire demands.22CalMatters. Water, Hydrant, Wildfire Misinformation UCLA researchers found that as homes burned, destroyed pipes acted as open drains on the municipal system, collapsing pressure regardless of how much water was in storage. UCLA also documented similar hydrant failures in the 2008, 2017, 2018, and 2024 California fires.23Los Angeles Times. LA Fires Water System
Plaintiffs argue the reservoir’s absence made a dire situation worse and that the city knew the Palisades sat in a high-risk fire zone. LADWP says the reservoir was taken offline to comply with safe drinking water regulations and that repairs were awaiting the city’s competitive bidding process.11LADWP News. Correcting Misinformation About LADWP’s Water System A June 2025 Blue Ribbon Commission report recommended underground cisterns, emergency shutoff valves, and backup power for water pumps, but as of January 2026 those recommendations had not been adopted as mandates.23Los Angeles Times. LA Fires Water System
What Comes Next
With the dismissal motions resolved, the Grigsby cases are in discovery. No trial date has been set, and no global settlement or mediation order exists. Resolution will be complicated by the need to apportion blame and any settlement funds among many public and private defendants, with public agencies likely to continue asserting governmental immunity on appeal.24EisnerAmper. Eaton and Palisades Fire Litigation
Insurer subrogation, in which carriers that have already paid claims seek reimbursement from parties found responsible, could eventually factor in. In past California wildfires, subrogation against utilities has recovered billions of dollars, though it remains early for those actions to take shape here.25Milliman. Industry Insured Losses for Los Angeles Wildfires The related federal criminal case against Jonathan Rinderknecht, indicted in October 2025 for allegedly starting the New Year’s Day Lachman Fire that prosecutors say resurged as the Palisades Fire, is a separate matter proceeding on its own track in U.S. District Court.26U.S. Department of Justice. United States v. Jonathan Rinderknecht