$49 Million Verdict for Seven Oregon Wildfire Survivors Against PacifiCorp

On Labor Day weekend 2020, powerful windstorms swept across Oregon and PacifiCorp, the Portland-based electrical utility, left its power lines energized despite warnings of extreme fire weather. The resulting ignitions touched off multiple fires, including the Santiam Canyon, Echo Mountain Complex, South Obenchain, and 242 fires, burning hundreds of thousands of acres and destroying entire communities.

Seven survivors brought their individual damages claims to trial in Multnomah County Circuit Court beginning February 2, 2025. The plaintiffs had already received acknowledgment that economic losses were real: PacifiCorp entered the trial having agreed to pay $3.6 million in economic damages for the group. The remaining fight was over what the survivors lost that cannot be tallied in receipts.

John Coletti of Paulson Coletti Trial Attorneys, together with co-counsel Wm. Keith Dozier of WKD Law, presented the human toll of the fires across several days of testimony. Coletti reminded the jury that damages are about more than belongings. On February 7, 2025, the jury agreed: it awarded $32.15 million in noneconomic damages, covering emotional suffering, loss of community, and long-term psychological harm. With the classwide punitive damages holding already established in the 2023 liability phase, the total verdict reached approximately $49 million.

The verdict was the third individual damages trial in the James et al. v. PacifiCorp class action and the fourth trial in the overall litigation. It brought the cumulative damages awarded across the class action to roughly $270 million at that point, with hundreds of additional claims still unresolved and more trials scheduled.

Note on appeal status: In April 2026, the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed the underlying Phase I class-action liability verdict on a procedural ground, finding that the trial court had improperly instructed the jury that evidence relating to some class members could be assumed to apply to the entire class. That reversal placed the individual damages verdicts, including this one, on hold. Plaintiffs petitioned the Oregon Supreme Court, which accepted review in June 2026 and scheduled oral argument for November 2026. The February 2025 verdict remains under appellate uncertainty pending that decision.