New lawsuit targets dry hydrants, empty reservoir in Palisades fire

The McNulty Law Firm and the Wood Law Firm have filed a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles and the Department of Water and Power in connection with the Palisades wildfire and reports that hydrants ran dry as firefighters attempted to battle the blaze.

"The Palisades Fire was an inescapable and unavoidable consequence of the water supply system servicing areas in and around Pacific Palisades as it was planned and constructed," the lawsuit filed on March 5 read. "The system necessarily failed, and this failure was a substantial factor in causing plaintiffs to suffer the losses alleged in this complaint."

The lawsuit was filed by McNulty attorneys Peter J. McNulty and Brett L. Rosenthal in Los Angeles, as well as E. Kirk Wood of the Wood Law Firm in Birmingham, Alabama.

"The Palisades Fire has caused untold devastation, destroying my clients' homes, businesses, and all or most of their personal property. LADWP and the City of Los Angeles had a duty to properly construct, inspect, maintain and operate its water supply system. The system necessarily failed, and this failure was a substantial factor in causing my clients to suffer catastrophic losses," McNulty stated in a news release on Friday.

The attorneys did not respond to emailed or phoned requests for additional comment by press time on Friday.

The lawsuit claims that the city's water infrastructure was negligently designed and maintained, with the Santa Ynez Reservoir offline and empty at the time, leaving fire crews with insufficient water to combat the wind-swept flames. Afshar et al. v. City of Los Angeles et al., 25STCV06359 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed March 5, 2025).

"Defendant Los Angeles Department of Water and Power ... made the conscious decision to operate the water supply system with the reservoir drained and unusable as a 'cost-saving' measure," the complaint claimed. "With the Santa Ynez Reservoir effectively out of commission, hydrants in Pacific Palisades failed after three tanks each holding one million gallons of water went dry within a span of 12 hours."

The lawsuit joins at least four other actions related to the Palisades fire, including one previously filed by the same attorneys on behalf of TV entertainers Spencer and Heidi Pratt and 20 additional plaintiffs. Spencer Pratt et al. v. City of Los Angeles et al., 258STCV01720 (L.A. Super. Ct., led Jan. 21, 2024)

Representatives for the city attorney's office and the Department of Water and Power did not respond to emailed requests for comment by press time on Friday.