$49 Million Verdict for Seven Oregon Wildfire Survivors Against PacifiCorp
After trial: The Oregon Court of Appeals reversed the underlying Phase I liability verdict on April 8, 2026, holding the trial court wrongly let the jury apply evidence about named class members to the whole class, and remanded for further proceedings. That ruling puts this award and roughly $1.2 billion in other awards to Labor Day fire survivors back in question; the Oregon Supreme Court has taken the case on review.
Won by Paulson Coletti Trial Attorneys.
John Coletti and co-counsel won a $49 million jury verdict on behalf of seven survivors of PacifiCorp's 2020 Labor Day wildfires, the fourth trial in the ongoing class litigation in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
What happened
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.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.OPB: Jury awards $50M to 2020 Oregon wildfire survivors, adding to PacifiCorp's growing tab (Feb. 7, 2025)·Archived copy
- 2.WKD Law: PacifiCorp Wildfire Trial - Jury Awards $49M to Survivors (2025)·Archived copy
- 3.Our Town Santiam: Wildfire trial - $48 million awarded in latest verdict against PacifiCorp (Feb. 2025)
- 4.KLCC (NPR): Dispute over $2.2 billion to thousands of wildfire survivors heads to Oregon Supreme Court (June 30, 2026)·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Paulson Coletti Trial Attorneys
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