{"id":3847,"date":"2025-01-24T04:49:25","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T04:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/heidi-montag-spencer-pratt-sue-city-of-l-a-over-palisades-fire\/"},"modified":"2025-01-24T04:49:25","modified_gmt":"2025-01-24T04:49:25","slug":"heidi-montag-spencer-pratt-sue-city-of-l-a-over-palisades-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/heidi-montag-spencer-pratt-sue-city-of-l-a-over-palisades-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Heidi Montag & Spencer Pratt Sue City of L.A. Over Palisades Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tHeidi Montag and Spencer Pratt have joined more than 20 other property owners in suing the City of Los Angeles and the L.A. Department of Water and Power, claiming the city\u2019s decision to \u201cdrain\u201d a local reservoir left firefighters without enough water to fight the devastating Palisades Fire that destroyed their home.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the complaint, which was filed Tuesday (Jan. 21), Pratt, Montag and their co-plaintiffs accuse L.A.\u2019s Department of Water and Power (LADWP) of making \u201cthe conscious decision to operate the water supply system with the reservoir drained and unusable as a \u2018cost-saving\u2019 measure,\u201d leading hydrants in the Pacific Palisades to \u201cfail\u2026within a span of 12 hours\u201d because the tanks that fed them were not replenished by water from the \u201cempty\u201d Santa Ynez Reservoir. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit cites multiple public officials, including Los Angeles County Public Works director Mark Pestrella, for allegedly acknowledging the failures that led to the fire\u2019s uncontrolled spread through a heavily populated area. It claims that \u201cDefendants also designed the water system for public use such that it would not have enough water pressure to fight an urban fire\u201d despite knowing the region was prone to destructive blazes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLADWP and City of Los Angeles had a duty to properly construct, inspect, maintain and operate its water supply system,\u201d reads the complaint, filed by attorneys Peter McNulty<\/strong>, Brett Rosenthal<\/strong> and E. Kirk Wood<\/strong>. \u201cThe Palisades Fire was an inescapable and unavoidable consequence of the water supply system operated by LADWP and City of Los Angeles as it was planned and constructed. The system necessarily failed, and this failure was a substantial factor in causing Plaintiffs to suffer the losses alleged in this Complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA key reason for the city and the LADWP\u2019s failure, according to the suit, was its stated decision to leave the reservoir \u201cempty for nearly a year\u201d in order \u201cto seek contractor bids rather than using in-house personnel to repair\u201d it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis stated public purpose was far outweighed by the substantial risk posed to Pacific Palisades by wildfires,\u201d the complaint continues. \u201cThe degree of damage that resulted from the Palisades Fire far outweighed any benefit that could have been realized by outsourcing and delaying repairs to the Santa Ynez Reservoir.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMontag, Pratt and their co-plaintiffs are seeking damages including \u201ccosts of repair, depreciation, and\/or replacement of damaged, destroyed, and\/or lost personal and\/or real property\u201d and \u201closs of wages, earning capacity, and\/or business profits or proceeds and\/or any related business interruption losses and displacement expenses,\u201d among other relief.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe City of Los Angeles and the LADWP did not immediately respond to Billboard<\/em>\u2018s requests for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tPratt became a ubiquitous presence on TikTok earlier this month after his and Montag\u2019s home was destroyed in the massive Palisades Fire, with the reality star encouraging fans to stream Montag\u2019s 2010 album Superficial <\/em>to help them recover from their losses. Thanks to those efforts, Superficial<\/em> and its songs have appeared on multiple Billboard<\/em> charts. This week, the album notched a No. 54 debut on the Billboard 200 with more than 15,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. the week ending Jan. 16, according to Luminate, with more than 3.5 million on-demand official streams in the tracking week and 12,000 downloads sold.<\/p>\n

\n\tSince breaking out on Jan. 7, the ongoing Palisades Fire has burned more than 23,000 acres, destroyed more than 6,000 structures and killed 11 people. It is now 72% contained. A second blaze, the Eaton Fire in Altadena, has burned more than 14,000 acres, destroyed more than 9,000 structures and killed 17. That fire is now at 95% containment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt have joined more than 20 other property owners in suing the City of Los Angeles and the L.A. Department of Water and Power, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[384,1103,4400,1539,4401,4403,1065,4402,440],"class_list":["post-3847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-city","tag-fire","tag-heidi","tag-l-a","tag-montag","tag-palisades","tag-pratt","tag-spencer","tag-sue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}