She is the nation’s most famous legal secretary, whose real-life advocacy on toxic groundwater was portrayed by Julia Roberts to Oscar-winning acclaim.
He is the most recognizable civil rights attorney of his generation, winning millions of dollars for Black and brown families whose loved ones — George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown — died at the hands of police and sparked a global outcry.
Both Erin Brockovich and Benjamin Crump have descended on the charred ruins of Altadena as the aftermath of the deadly Eaton fire shifts to the courthouse, with Southern California Edison in the crosshairs.
And they’re not alone.
In churches, community centers and hotel conference rooms, on private Zoom calls and at public food giveaways, lawyers and their swarm of assistants, marketers and so-called victim advocates are ready and available. Mailboxes have filled up with printed fliers inviting Altadenans to town halls and free consults, often assuring: “Let us fight for you.” One firm from Oakland promised a complimentary dinner at the Pasadena Hilton.
Nowhere is the stampede more visible than on social media.
“We are here to help,” said one firm’s Instagram ad. “You may be entitled to compensation,” said another ad from an L.A. firm known for car crash and employment claims. “Start your 30-second eligibility quiz,” said a Florida-based marketing agency, Legal Claim Assistant, which does not even list a lawyer associated with it.
“The ick is real, and it feels very predatory,” said Jennifer Gray Thompson, chief executive officer of After The Fire USA, a nonprofit that has worked in Lahaina, Paradise and other communities ravaged by wildfire. “It feels like it’s a feeding frenzy off of people’s trauma and suffering.”
Some lawyers admit to being taken aback by some of the tactics.
“We are hearing reports of people getting accosted by someone with a clipboard while they are in line at the grocery store,” said J. Eli Wade-Scott, a partner at Edelson, a national firm representing hundreds of Eaton fire victims. “That is totally improper.”
Billions of dollars are potentially on the line for those who lost homes, businesses or loved ones in the flames. Pacific Gas & Electric paid a settlement of cash and stock valued at $13.5 billion to victims of the 2018 Camp fire and other blazes. As part of negotiations for the landmark PG&E payout, the state set up a fund in 2019 for future victims of fires caused by utilities, which now holds about $13 billion but can pay out up to $21 billion.
For lawyers, who generally take no upfront payment, their typical one-third cut of any future settlement could be enormous.
“There’s a bunch of people who think this is a gold rush and are trying to sign up everyone and their brother,” said John Manly, the Orange County lawyer famous for representing sex abuse victims against USC, UCLA and the Catholic Church. “There are good firms advertising, and that’s OK. But when someone comes from Rhode Island and says, ‘I’ll do your wildfire case in California,’ be suspect.”
For the Eaton fire, which destroyed more than 9,400 structures and claimed 17 lives, victims will square off against one of the region’s most deep-pocketed utilities, which is armed with a phalanx of lawyers and savvy political operations.
Against that Goliath, attorneys seeking to represent victims present themselves as a latter-day David, with Crump and Brockovich, who is not a lawyer, as some of their most visible leaders.
“We don’t want three-fifths justice. We want complete justice!” Crump bellowed from the crimson-carpeted altar of Pasadena Church East, a congregation near Eaton Canyon, flanked by lawyers and activists.
Crump and his legal team, including Orange County lawyer Anne Andrews, used the church grounds for several town halls for Eaton fire victims in a community with many historically Black neighborhoods. Prospective clients filled out paperwork in a van parked outside.
“We have to make sure that people don’t forget about Altadena,” Crump said.
‘I’m going to fight for you’
On a recent Friday night, Brockovich kicked off a town hall at Pasadena Masonic Temple after attorney Doug Boxer introduced her to applause.
“There is no more fearless advocate for people than Erin Brockovich,” Boxer said, noting that he met Brockovich when she worked on legislation with his mother, former Sen. Barbara Boxer.
With more than 200 people seated before her, Brockovich said she was “indignant” and condemned the “failures” that led to the Eaton fire.
“I hear people say, ‘Maybe it’s not best to rebuild.’ That’s not going to happen,” she said. “I love my state. And I’m going to fight for you.”
Although Brockovich’s name headlined the event, Mikal Watts, a Texas lawyer whose practice has focused on wildfires across the western U.S., did most of the talking. The Eaton fire, he said, was his 22nd.
“How many of you lost your homes?” Watts asked from the podium, with a Texas drawl and the commanding presence of a preacher. More than 30 raised their hands.
Watts sought to distance himself from his peers, explaining why he waited until Feb. 7 to start holding town halls.
“When somebody is burned out of house and home, the last thing you need in the first month is lawyers chasing you down,” Watts continued. “I told our team, our first meeting is going to be on the seventh of February, 30 days in. Because the shock and trauma in your eyes has been replaced with a steely determination to try to figure out why.”
Over the next hour, he walked through the evidence his team had gathered: cellphone footage from neighbors, drone footage of Southern California Edison towers, interviews with witnesses, electric data from the utility.
Watts outlined the core allegation: that the fire originated with Southern California Edison’s equipment and that the utility had attempted to mislead the public about it.
“This is as close to a puzzle that fits as I’ve ever seen,” Watts said. “You can feel good that if you choose to get involved and you choose to bring a claim against Southern California Edison, you are getting engaged in a righteous endeavor. This is a righteous lawsuit.”
Whether Southern California Edison was responsible for sparking the Jan. 7 blaze remains to be confirmed by authorities, but the county of L.A. and scores of Altadena residents have already sued the utility, accusing it of causing the inferno. Company records uncovered by The Times show that Edison knew some of its towers at and near the likely ignition point were fire hazards.
“We understand and share the desire to determine what started the Eaton fire, and the important thing to remember is that we are in the early stages of this investigation,” Jennifer Dunleavy, an Edison spokesperson, said in an interview. “Speculating on the cause only does the victims and the community a disservice.”
Watts and others have their critics. Chief among them is Will Abrams, who barely escaped the 2017 Tubbs fire and lost his Sonoma home. Abrams signed up with a San Francisco lawyer and was one of thousands who lodged claims against PG&E. But he grew frustrated by the 2019 plan to settle for $13.5 billion with a mix of cash and PG&E stock held in trust, which Watts helped negotiate and lobbied victims to approve.
Brockovich authored an op-ed touting the settlement as “providing the money needed to rebuild your homes and your communities now.” Watts defended the deal as a pragmatic way of delivering compensation at a time when PG&E was in bankruptcy and facing complex legal and financial challenges.
“If victims reject this … you’ll get very little compared to the 13 and a half [billion] that’s been agreed to,” Watts told fire victims at an April 2020 town hall. “There is no Plan B. There is no other viable alternative available.”
When PG&E funded the settlement in 2020, its stock was $2.4 billion short of what was anticipated, and the trust determined that victims’ claims exceeded $19 billion.Fire victims like Abrams have received payouts in increments, but they are still 30% short.
Barring legislative intervention, the fire victims will never be made whole. Abrams is advocating to amend state law so that victims of the Camp, Tubbs and other fires in the trust can tap into the $21-billion wildfire relief fund. But that effort, if successful, would diminish the money available to cover losses from the Eaton fire.
“The speed of getting paid was something we were sold with the deal. Here we are, seven years plus later, without being fully compensated,” Abrams said.
Watts told The Times in a statement, “I agree that 70% of full compensation is not justice,” adding that he also supports the Legislature amending the $21-billion fund “to ensure that ALL damages from the previous PG&E fires … are paid for in full as well.”
Lawyers have largely focused on the Eaton fire, rather than the Palisades fire, because of the volume of records pointing to its cause and the fact that a deep-pocketed private utility has been linked to it. The origin of the Palisades fire remains murkier.
Kevin Boyle, a Pacific Palisades resident who is representing several homeowners in a Palisades fire lawsuit filed Thursday against the L.A. Department of Water and Power, acknowledged that Palisades victims face a steeper hill.
Still, Boyle said he is taking on the case because of his belief that the DWP “failed” in its mission.
“They had no water, and they had too much power — they never de-energized any of those power lines,” Boyle said, listing factors that he believed led to the devastation.
Finding a lawyer is like a ‘choose-your-own adventure’
Thompson, the CEO of After the Fire, emphasized that litigation is a “really important” part of the recovery and rebuilding, but she highlighted several caveats.
“People should know that they can actually wait. They don’t need to be in a hurry to get an attorney,” she said, describing the bombardment from lawyers as a “choose-your-own adventure.”
George Cardona, chief prosecutor for the State Bar of California, advises skepticism about any lawyer or their staff who creates pressure or urgency.
“Step back, exercise due diligence and make sure that someone you hire is someone you trust and want to work with,” he said.
The Bar, which regulates lawyers and helps the public verify attorneys’ credentials, has established several rules to guard against predatory marketing. Lawyers are prohibited from soliciting clients in person, over the phone or using other real-time communications, and are barred from using non-lawyers to solicit clients, a practice known as capping.
These restrictions have helped make the “town hall” a common way of getting in front of prospective clients.
“Providing information without any kind of direct pitch for employing that particular lawyer generally is OK,” Cardona said.
Lawyers who work on wildfire cases say there are two general classes of attorneys: Some try to amass as many clients as possible, to refer them to other lawyers or to “park them” with a wait-and-see approach. In the other bucket are lawyers who promise to take their clients’ cases to the finish line and have experience battling utilities.
“There’s questions people should ask: Have you ever taken a wildfire case to trial?” Wade-Scott said.
Manly, the Orange County sex abuse lawyer, suggested that prospective clients ask: What will be the attorney’s involvement in the case? Which experts will they use? How will they prove the case?
“These are all things a lawyer should be prepared to answer. If they don’t have the answers, you need to think twice,” Manly said.
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