LA Homeowners Sue Over Fire Losses, Blame City and Fire Department for Catastrophic Failures

A Los Angeles couple who lost their home in the Palisades Fire, have filed suit against the city, the LAFD and the city’s Department of Water and Power, alleging their combined failures caused their damages.

Edward Klimaszewski and Anastasia Klimaszewski-Roussel filed suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court alleging two counts, inverse condemnation, and breach of a mandatory duty. They claim the Palisades Fire was a rekindle of an earlier fire, which LAFD failed to ensure was extinguished. They also claim that error was compounded by the city’s failure to maintain an adequate water supply.  Quoting from the complaint:

• This case arises out of the catastrophic Palisades Fire that began on January 7, 2025 in the hills southeast of Palisades Drive in Pacific Palisades, California.
• It ultimately became the worst natural disaster in the history of the City of Los Angeles, scorching over 23,000 acres, destroying more than 6,800 structures, killing at eleven people, and displacing tens of thousands of residents.
• Plaintiffs … lost their home … to the fire, along with all their personal property, irreplaceable family items, documents, and household effects.
• The Palisades Fire was driven by hurricane-force winds, critically low humidity, and dangerously dry fuel levels.
• But the devastation was vastly compounded by the Defendants’ deliberate and reckless decision to operate Pacific Palisades’ water system with its largest firefighting asset — the Santa Ynez Reservoir — offline for nearly a year.
• LADWP’s own senior officials admitted that the Santa Ynez Reservoir, with 117 million gallons of emergency water, was taken out of service in February 2024 and left empty as a “cost-saving” measure.
• By the time the fire broke out, firefighters were relying on three smaller tanks (1 million gallons each), all of which ran dry within 12 hours — by 3:00 a.m. on January 8.
• Without water pressure, fire hydrants failed. Fire crews could not mount any meaningful suppression effort. Residents were forced to abandon their homes, many literally running for their lives as the fire advanced.
• As the New York Times put it, the Palisades Fire “exposed a web of governments, weak by design.” It was not just tragic — it was a foreseeable, systemic failure at the most basic level of public service.
• Defendants’ water system design, construction, and operation constituted a known, inherent risk to private property, especially in a high-fire-risk zone explicitly flagged by the California Public Utilities Commission’s Fire-Threat Map.
• Defendants’ mismanagement of the water system was not only negligent — it constituted a violation of Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.
• The destruction of Plaintiffs’ home and property, a direct and foreseeable result of Defendants’ conduct, constitutes an unconstitutional taking without just compensation under Article I, Section 19 of the California Constitution and the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
• Further, video that captured the ignition of the Palisades Fire on January 7 provides evidence the disastrous blaze was the rekindling of a fire from days earlier, according to four wildfire investigation experts who reviewed the footage. That footage shows that the two wildfires broke out in very close proximity: the small Lachman Fire on New Year’s Day and, six days later, the Palisades Fire.
• According to experts, the Palisades Fire falls under the category of a “rekindle” because of an undiscovered ignition outside the border of the fire. In effect, another fire was already going, it just did not travel until the winds kicked up.
• And, on January 7, the National Weather Service warned Southern California that a “life-threatening, destructive and widespread windstorm” could batter the tinder-dry region. Any spark, the agency said, could lead to “extreme fire behavior.”
• Despite these warnings, Defendant LOS ANGELES FIRE DEPARTMENT did not return to the prior burn area after they had left it at 4:14 p.m. on January 1.
• The inherent and foreseeable risk of a fire — in the area where a fire had burned only days earlier — was exacerbated by Defendants’ water supply mismanagement and failed infrastructure.
• As a direct and proximate result of Defendants’ acts and omissions to act, Plaintiffs were damaged and suffered substantial losses; Plaintiffs seek damages for the total loss of their residence, personal property, loss of use and enjoyment, displacement expenses, general damages, emotional distress damages, and all other foreseeable and consequential harms.

Here is a copy of the complaint: