Skip Links

Law360 (May 21, 2025) — An Oregon jury held Wednesday that PacifiCorp must pay roughly $50 million to 10 victims of the state’s 2020 Labor Day wildfires, bringing the total damages verdicts in the class action against the Berkshire Hathaway-owned utility to $385 million as more bellwether trials are expected to play out throughout 2025.

The verdict awarded this trial’s 10 plaintiff victims of the 2020 Labor Day fires, which killed 11 individuals and burnt more than 4,000 structures, a total of roughly $35.5 million in noneconomic and economic damages, the latter of which will be doubled, according to the verdict form. A previous jury’s classwide holding requires PacifiCorp to pay a 25% premium as punitive damages, bringing the latest total verdict to approximately $50 million.

The damages verdict came down in favor of three victims of the Echo Mountain Complex fire, Sherrie Eddy, Wanda Ford and Adrienne Garcia; two victims of the South Obenchain fire, Linda Perkins and Laura Wamsle; and five plaintiffs — Troy Martell, Mary and Robert Bruce Morris, Colleen Samuel and Claire White — who were victims of the Santiam Canyon fire.

The plaintiffs’ win in state court is the latest development in sprawling class litigation over a series of devastating fires sparked during unusually high winds in September 2020. Jurors in the first trial held in 2023 that PacifiCorp was grossly negligent in leaving power on in the state’s densely forested regions amid the historic wind event. Read more at here