Is L.A. liable for Palisades fire costs?

When federal prosecutors arrested a man Wednesday on suspicion of setting a small fire that reignited days later into the deadly Palisades blaze, they suggested the arrest largely settled the matter of blame.

- BY JENNY JARVIE

"A single person’s recklessness caused one of the worst fires Los Angeles has ever seen," Bill Essayli, acting United States attorney for Central California, said as he announced the arrest of Jonathan Rinderknecht, a 29-year-old Uber driver.

But the new details they offered about the cause of the fire only added to residents’ anger and dismay about how city officials handled the disaster, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes across Pacific Palisades and Malibu. It also renewed calls for City Hall to be held accountable.

Until this week, the focus of Palisades residents has been on a reservoir that was supposed to be a key source of water for the neighborhood being dry and other issues related to the fire response. But federal investigators concluded Wednesday that L.A. firefighters thought they had put out the small fire Rinderknecht allegedly set Jan. 1 only for it to smolder and burn underground and then rekindle in heavy winds Jan. 7.

This latest revelation is fueling debate over whether the city of L.A. or the state can be found civilly liable for its role in the fire.

Already, a flurry of complaints have been filed over the last 10 months accusing various L.A. and California officials of failing to prepare for and respond to the fire.

Most legal experts agree that cases against government entities are tough because California law gives public officials broad immunity from failing to provide fire protection. Some argue that a criminal case against Rinderknecht could ultimately hurt residents’ civil complaints.

“Now those civil cases are dead in the water, because you have an arsonist,” said Neama Rahmani, president of the L.A.-based law firm West Coast Trial Lawyers, which is handling Eaton fire cases against Edison.

“That ultimately means that the already weak civil cases against the government became even weaker,” he said, “because now you have the person who's really at fault for all this.”