L.A. agrees to mediation with Palisades Fire victims Play

The City of Los Angeles is taking the first legal steps to start paying out damage money to the tens of thousands of Malibu and Pacific Palisades residents who suffered financial loss — in some cases financial ruin — from the Palisades Fire.

The City of L.A. and its Department of Water and Power have agreed to enter formal mediation with the victims. That includes the survivors of the 12 people killed in the January 2025 Palisades Fire, which killed seven people in and around Malibu and destroyed 720 houses in Malibu alone.

Mediation sessions are scheduled to begin in early October.

Ellen Wolf is a Malibu attorney and one of the lead attorneys in the mass lawsuit. KBUU asked her what this legal step means.

"Well it doesn't mean anything yet, other than that a process is beginning that we hope will result in some sort of methodology for settlement with some or all of the defendants," Wolf said. "If that were to come about, then it would mean people would have a path to getting their recoveries."

Note she said "some or all of the defendants." Also on the list of agencies accused of causing the fire are California State Parks and the State of California.

It was state rangers who prevented L.A. City Fire from putting the fire out when it was still small. And it was their unkempt weeds in Temescal Canyon that incubated the massive fire.

The state has yet to agree to the arbitration deal. That means that even if an agreement is reached with the City of L.A., the lawsuits against the State of California and other remaining defendants will trudge on.

So how does this mediation agreement with L.A. affect the timeline for fire victims to get paid? Compare it to the Woolsey Fire of 2018. Wolf says the mediation agreement for Woolsey was signed about 27 months after the flames were put out.

"So that could line up with something like this," Wolf said. "If this took a few months to put together, then this could be effective somehow in the first quarter of next year. That would line up with when the Woolsey Fire agreement was effective."

Asked how this case differs from Woolsey — since here the defendant is a municipal corporation rather than Southern California Edison — Wolf agreed.

"Of course it's different," she said. "Here we have different lawyers also representing different defendants. And we don't know whether all the defendants are going to be included in this protocol. In Woolsey, we only had one defendant, which was Edison. Here we have a number of defendants, including the State of California and the City of Los Angeles. So it will be different and we don't know exactly how or what will be the result. This initial mediation will probably be to determine methodology, the mechanism as to how we settle so many cases against which defendants."

In the Palisades Fire, the victims' lawsuit blames the City of L.A. and the city-owned L.A. Department of Water and Power. The DWP left fire hydrants dry for years and left a reservoir empty. That led to low water pressure and inadequate supplies during the firefighting effort.

The lawsuits also claim that California State Parks played a role, regarding whether the Palisades Fire was exacerbated by or connected to lingering embers from the earlier Lachman Fire managed on state-affiliated property.

Wolf says the state needs to enter the mediation process because people are really suffering.

"I do hope we get there, I hope it's productive," she said. "Because the people who lost so much in this fire really need to have the stepping stones to get their lives back together and to get rebuilt. And whether they're going to rebuild here in the Palisades and Malibu, or they have to rebuild somewhere else, they need this money to get rebuilt. So I'm very hopeful for that."

The first mediation talks for the Palisades Fire are expected to begin in early October.

One sidenote: you may have heard the extensive advertising being put up by Southern California Edison for victims of the Eaton Fire. That one destroyed Altadena on the same day the Palisades Fire destroyed eastern Malibu and the Palisades. Edison is encouraging fire victims to skip the expensive legal battle, bypass the mediation stage, and get their fire damages right now.

Edison is a for-profit company and can make that decision, based on the reasonable prediction that it was responsible for the fire that destroyed Altadena. The agreement by the City of L.A. to go into mediation will not result in immediate payouts like Edison is offering in Altadena.

And this footnote: attorney Ellen Wolf represented KBUU and its managers in a damages lawsuit against Southern California Edison.