Gerald Singleton, Managing Partner at Singleton Schreiber in San Diego, was recently featured by the BBC in their documentary, "The Day Los Angeles Burned".
The documentary provides never-before-seen footage and testimonies from survivors of the 2025 LA Fires (including the Eaton Fire and Hurst Fire); the devastation and impact that homeowners and business owners are navigating in the aftermath; the struggle that the families of the 29 individuals who perished face; and how climate change & the underfunding of public services were a direct cause to the outbreak according to experts like Mr. Singleton, who is representing over 1600 Altadena victims against Southern California Edison.
"We do not invest enough in infrastructure to combat fires, period, full stop." said Mr. Singleton.
Mr. Singleton was also asked why SCE should be held responsible for the cause of the fire.
"When there's a break in the electricity and it jumps free that's where you get those arcing events which are essentially what looks like fire shooting out of it. The evidence is about as clear as you can get at this stage that Edison caused it," said Mr. Singleton. "There's actually several videos, but one in particular shows the fire starting. We also have witnesses of the exact same thing."
The BBC concludes their feature of Mr. Singleton by positing to him why SCE didn't cut off the supply of electricity despite the company already facing over $10 billion in settlements and damages.
"Typically, the large transmission lines don't have rubber insulating on them. The official rationale is that they are insulated by air," said Mr. Singleton. "But the real reason is that it costs money and that's why over the years we've had so many problems with fires and other disasters.
We've had fires that we sued Edison for in 2017, 2018, 2020, 2022 and then this past one here. The majority of those fires have fatalities, some of them large fatalities. So, Edison has not done a good job at adapting to this new reality".
