John Fiske

The Fire’s Public Ledger

The Dixie Fire burned 963,309 acres. John Fiske represented ten governments and public districts whose losses had to be measured in roads, labor, revenue, water systems, parkland, emergency operations, and natural resources.

A family experiences wildfire through a home, a business, a death, or a forced departure. Counties and utility districts face additional public costs and losses. Pavement must be rebuilt. Water systems must continue operating. Fire and public-works employees accumulate extraordinary hours. Tax receipts fall while emergency expenses rise. Forest, recreation, and watershed losses remain after the evacuation orders end.

Fiske represents the public bodies responsible for restoring roads, water systems, schools, hospitals, and emergency services after a disaster.

The legal work converts those obligations into recoverable categories without merging them with the claims of residents, businesses, or private property owners. A public settlement must identify which entity sustained which loss, which assistance funds already entered the picture, and which public entity will perform the rebuilding.

Ten Hours at Cresta Dam

At 6:48 on the morning of July 13, 2021, a damaged, decayed Douglas fir fell across Pacific Gas and Electric distribution lines above Cresta Dam. Two fuses opened. A third conductor remained energized against the tree. The California Public Utilities Commission’s investigation concluded that the resulting high-impedance fault heated and arced in dry fuel for approximately ten hours.

A PG&E troubleman reached the fuses at 4:50 p.m. He found the tree on the line and a fire below it, radioed for help, and tried to contain the flames. Aircraft arrived at 5:30; a ground crew arrived at 7:00. By containment 104 days later, the Dixie Fire had crossed five counties and 963,309 acres. The CPUC recorded 1,311 structures destroyed, ninety-four damaged, and four people injured.

CAL FIRE determined that tree contact with PG&E’s lines caused the ignition. The CPUC’s Safety and Enforcement Division later identified maintenance, inspection-record, vegetation, hazardous-tree, and outage-response issues. PG&E disputed negligence and other findings but did not contest CAL FIRE’s cause determination in the later regulatory case.

CAL FIRE and the CPUC established the fire’s cause and regulatory history. Fiske’s clients still needed separate proof of public loss: which road segments failed, which staff hours exceeded ordinary operations, which revenues disappeared, which facilities were damaged, and which public resources required restoration.

Ten Governments, One $24 Million Allocation

Fiske represented Butte, Plumas, Shasta, Lassen, and Tehama Counties; the City of Susanville; Plumas District Hospital; Chester Public Utility District; Herlong Public Utility District; and Honey Lake Valley Recreation Authority. Their legal damages included public and natural resources, pavement and roads, labor time, lost revenue, increased expenses, and the cost of maintaining services during recovery.

Judge Jay Gandhi and Lexi Myer mediated the civil claims. In January 2023, the ten entities settled with PG&E for $24 million. The agreement allocated funds in proportion to each entity’s relative damages rather than dividing the total evenly. It also accounted for assistance connected to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

PG&E settled the disputed claims without admitting liability. The $24 million payment was allocated among ten governments and districts for infrastructure, staffing, lost revenue, and other public resources affected by the Dixie Fire.

Fiske said the Dixie Fire money would return to communities whose governments still had to repair facilities and restore public services.

PG&E’s $1 Billion Public-Entity Settlement

The Dixie settlement followed a larger public-entity negotiation inside PG&E’s bankruptcy. When the utility entered Chapter 11 in 2019, wildfire claims arising from the Butte, North Bay, and Camp Fires moved into a reorganization alongside claims by families, businesses, insurers, and other creditors.

Fiske and Scott Summy served as lead counsel for eighteen public entities. Mediation produced a $1 billion cash settlement incorporated into the plan that the bankruptcy court confirmed in June 2020. The confirmed plan separately provided a $13.5 billion trust for families, businesses, and private property owners.

The separation mattered. The $1 billion addressed taxpayer and public-entity losses. It did not replace or consume the private claims of residents and businesses. The public clients included counties, cities, the Town of Paradise, park and fire districts, a community-college district, and water and sewer agencies—public bodies whose obligations survived the destruction of the property around them.

Because PG&E was in bankruptcy, payment depended on the Chapter 11 plan, creditor approval, and the utility’s emergence from bankruptcy. Fiske combined litigation, mediation, and public-finance work to secure an enforceable payment for public entities.

Southern California Public-Entity Settlement

Southern California public entities faced a different utility and a different set of disasters. Fiske worked with a team representing twenty-three cities, counties, and special districts in claims arising from the Thomas and Koenigstein Fires, the Montecito Debris Flows, and the Woolsey Fire.

After multi-day mediation, Southern California Edison agreed in 2019 to a $360 million settlement in principle for public entities. The agreement remained separate from claims by residents, individuals, and businesses. Counties and districts recovered for losses to their budgets, public property, services, and environment.

The resolution also incorporated a first-of-its-kind accord addressing reimbursement of disaster-relief funds provided by FEMA and Cal OES. Emergency aid had entered the affected communities before the civil claims ended. The settlement structure therefore had to account for public assistance as well as the local entities’ own uncompensated losses.

Fiske’s work around those fires extended to California’s Legislature, where he participated in efforts during 2018 and 2019 to preserve inverse-condemnation rights for public entities and wildfire victims. The work included litigation, mediation, legislation, and reimbursement claims for public entities.

Twenty-Three Districts, One Million Students

In March 2020, a California judge appointed Fiske and Rahul Ravipudi co-lead counsel for public entities in coordinated litigation involving JUUL. Fiske then represented twenty-three California school districts enrolling more than one million students.

The districts alleged that youth vaping disrupted classrooms and required expenditures outside ordinary educational operations. They identified outreach programs, vape detectors, video surveillance, investigation, enforcement, discipline, health-related absences, and the resulting loss of attendance-based state funding.

The Judicial Council Coordinated Proceeding transferred separately filed cases sharing common issues into one California court. Coordination did not make every district’s loss identical. It created one forum for common discovery, motion practice, leadership, and settlement work while each school system retained its own students, attendance data, staffing decisions, and local expenditures.

The school districts sought reimbursement for costs borne by their education systems and the programs needed to respond. Personal claims by students or families remained legally distinct from the districts’ budgets, staffing, attendance, and cleanup costs.

Baron & Budd reports more than $270 million recovered while Fiske represented 300 school districts and public entities nationwide. The progression from twenty-three California districts to hundreds of public clients preserved the same unit of proof: the school budget, the program diverted, the staff time consumed, and the learning environment the district was obligated to maintain.

The Storm Drain Becomes the Plaintiff

Polychlorinated biphenyls created a slower public loss. Monsanto manufactured PCBs for decades before domestic production ended in 1977. Municipal plaintiffs alleged that the chemicals remained in building materials and industrial equipment, migrated into soil and sediment, and entered rivers, bays, and harbors through public stormwater systems.

The cities and counties operating those systems had not manufactured the chemicals. They nevertheless faced monitoring, permitting, treatment, and remediation obligations once PCBs reached publicly managed waterways. The storm drain became the point where a historic product entered a present municipal budget.

In City of Long Beach v. Monsanto Co., the federal court appointed Fiske, Summy, and Carla Burke Pickrel as lead class counsel. The class joined more than 2,400 public entities confronting similar stormwater and waterbody costs. Final approval in November 2022 created a $537.5 million nationwide settlement, with Long Beach expected to receive the largest individual class allocation at $7.5 million. The defendants admitted no liability.

The nationwide class is one component of a broader PCB docket. Baron & Budd reports more than $800 million resolved across the class and separate state, county, city, port, and other public-client matters. The distinction keeps the numbers legible: $537.5 million for the final nationwide class, with additional public resolutions outside that class producing the larger aggregate.

Thirty Counties Become Thirty-Seven

In May 2018, thirty California counties formed the California Opioid Consortium. Together they represented approximately 10.5 million residents. Each county filed its own federal action and expected transfer into the National Prescription Opiate Litigation before Judge Dan Polster in the Northern District of Ohio.

The complaints sought abatement as well as reimbursement of taxpayer spending. They alleged that manufacturers misrepresented addiction risks and that distributors failed to monitor and report suspicious opioid shipments. The public costs extended through treatment, education, social services, emergency response, and law enforcement.

The consortium created common legal organization without dissolving local government into one claimant. San Diego County, Sacramento County, Contra Costa County, rural counties, and participating cities each carried different populations, service systems, and expenditures. Coordination allowed common corporate evidence and national procedure to support locally measured relief.

His current practice includes thirty-seven California counties and cities serving more than eleven million residents.

Public Agencies and Continuing Obligations

Fiske’s active wildfire docket continues the model. He represents Maui County in a civil action seeking public infrastructure, response, revenue, environmental, historic, and cultural losses arising from the 2023 fires. He represents five public entities in the Mosquito Fire litigation. In the Eaton Fire proceedings, his team represents Pasadena Unified School District and public water suppliers whose facilities and operations were damaged. These active matters extend the same public-entity model across infrastructure, schools, water systems, cultural resources, and long-term recovery.

Baron & Budd identifies 104 wildfire public clients, more than seventy resolved, and approximately $1.7 billion recovered in wildfire matters. Across all public-entity work since 2018, the firm reports more than $2.5 billion, spanning multiple utilities, disasters, forums, settlements, and clients.

Fiske graduated cum laude from San Diego State University and California Western School of Law. He is admitted in California, all four federal districts in the state, and the Ninth Circuit. His practice has grown from California wildfire disputes into national school, water, contamination, opioid, and public-nuisance litigation.

Fiske’s clients remain responsible for reopening roads, maintaining water service, restoring schools, and meeting environmental obligations after litigation ends. His work measures those public losses and directs recovery to the public entities that must carry the rebuilding forward.