California Fire Victim Trust Has Received 250K Claims So Far April 14, 2021
The Fire Victim Trust, established to pay California wildfire victims on July 1, 2020, has received 40,000 claims questionnaires representing more than 70,000 claimants and roughly 250,000 individual claims, according to the trustee.
Judge John K. Trotter (Ret)., the trustee, filed a letter with the bankruptcy court this week containing information for victims of the 2015-2018 wildfires that Pacific Gas & Electric has been blamed for starting, including an update on the number of payments made to fire victims.
The trust earlier this year filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court against certain former officers and directors of PG&E Corp. and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. for their role in causing the catastrophic 2017 North Bay Fires and the 2018 Camp Fire.
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When a property owner suffers damage as a result of the actions of a public agency or public improvement, the owner typically pursues typical tort causes of action against the agency, along with a claim for inverse condemnation. While liability for the tort claims is decided by a jury, liability for inverse condemnation is determined by a judge. So what happens when both claims are pursued simultaneously should the judge rely on the jury’s determination of causation, or should the judge make his or her own findings?
Faced with a lawsuit and an unfavorable ruling from a Superior Court judge, the San Francisco school board voted on Tuesday to rescind a controversial January resolution approving the renaming of 44 district schools.
The reversal, approved 6-0 at a regular board meeting conducted on Zoom, means that Dianne Feinstein Elementary School, Abraham Lincoln High School and others that had attracted considerable controversy during the renaming process will remain unchanged for now. The board said it would revisit the renaming effort only after students returned to school five days a week, likely in the fall.
Some Jewish groups, including a collection of parents at Feinstein Elementary, expressed opposition specifically to the renaming of that school, which was proposed because of an incident involving the then–San Francisco mayor in 1984 (Feinstein defended the inclusion of a Confederate battle flag in a historical display outside City Hall).
As Wilford Brimley once observed in
Absence of Malice “Wonderful thing, subpoenas.” Faced with lawsuits over its historically illiterate school renaming decisions, the San Francisco Unified School District board will vote to cancel the project entirely, the Associated Press reports this morning. The effort had already been “paused” after the school board got an avalanche of criticism over its “shoddy research,” and also the timing of the effort:
The renaming effort also was criticized for shoddy research and historical inaccuracies. A renaming advisory committee wrongly accused Paul Revere of seeking to colonize the Penobscot people. It also confused the name of Alamo Elementary School with the Texas battle rather than the Spanish word for “poplar tree.”
San Francisco school board suspends plan to rename schools
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JOCELYN GECKER, Associated Press
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1of3Abraham Lincoln High School is seen in San Francisco, on Jan. 27, 2021. The embattled San Francisco school board is poised to reverse a decision to rename 44 schools in an effort to avoid costly litigation and tone down national criticism. In a Tuesday, April 6, 2021, meeting, the board will vote on a resolution to rescind a controversial January decision to rename schools and revisit the matter after all students have returned full-time to in-person learning.Haven Daley/APShow MoreShow Less
2of3The main entry to George Washington High School is seen in San Francisco, on Jan. 27, 2021. The embattled San Francisco school board is poised to reverse a decision to rename 44 schools in an effort to avoid costly litigation and tone down national criticism. In a Tuesday, April 6, 2021, meeting, the board will vote on a resolution to rescind a cont