Electric company ordered to pay more than a million dollars in damages over farmer's fence after refusing to compensate him: 'He would have gladly settled [for] $10K'

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Oct 4, 2024 2:00 PM EDT

Never underestimate the power of a wronged dude with nothing to lose.

After a portion of his ranch was destroyed, this farmer learned that the cause was a flaw in the electrical line that resulted in his fence catching fire. He tried to reason with the electric company, but they refused to grant him any compensation despite the fact that he was entitled to it and had confirmed with his wife, a lawyer who specializes in such cases, that he deserved repayment. The manager at the company assumed this farmer had no standing and no resources in his corner, so he told him to sue them if he really wanted to. Well, that employee would come to regret his brazen behavior because when the farmer did take these guys to court, he learned that he was entitled to more than the tens of thousands of dollars in damages he was expecting to win. Instead, he ended up receiving over a million dollars as a result of the electric company's negligence. They should have just reasoned with him in the first place!

Keep scrolling below for the full story. For more content like this, take a look at this post about 1099 contractors who got back at their boss.

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    JOHN DEER 568
    via Jed Owen

    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

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    Won't compensate me for my fence? Then compensate me 100 times as much for my crops!
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    The malicious compliance in this story is not mine; it's my brother in law's. Some of the details may be slightly off, but the overall story is true.
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    My brother in law grows avocados in California. Several years ago, a portion of his ranch was ravaged by a wildfire, or so he thought at first. When the smoke cleared, it became obvious that the fire was caused by an electrical line that was blown over by strong winds and had landed on his fence, catching it on fire.
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    Since he had been planning on diversifying his crops anyway, he decided he'd simply replace his fence, replant, and move on. To that end, he called up the electric company that owned the downed line and asked them for about $10K in compensation to replace the fence that had been destroyed by their electrical line. They denied
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    any and all culpability in the matter and told him that he should sue them if he didn't like it. What the electric company didn't realize was that my sister, his wife, works full time as a corporate attorney for one of the largest utilities in California, defending against cases just like this one. At first she was concerned that this
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    utility was a subsidiary of her employer, in which case there would be a massive conflict of interest. Apparently legal departments frown on their employees when their husband is suing them. Go figure. Thankfully, after some investigation, she realized that the utility in question was completely independent of her employer, and at that point the
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    gloves were off. My sister didn't represent her husband because she's typically on the other side of these cases, but she did advise him on everything he needed to bring to court to win his case, and she helped him find a very reputable lawyer with a solid record of winning cases like these. Not knowing what they were up
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    against, the utility persisted in refusing to negotiate, hoping that by forcing my brother in law to trial, he would simply give up and go away.
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    Spurred on by my sister's insistence that he had a solid case, he called their bluff and went to trial. As it turns out, California takes agricultural damage very
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    seriously, and the court conducted its own independent investigation. It estimated the total damages at around $335,000, which is over 33 times as much as my brother in law had asked for initially.
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    Furthermore, there is a law in California that awards triple damages in cases where agriculture is impacted, so the utility that had been unwilling to
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    negotiate over $10K was now on the hook for over a million dollars in damages. When all was said and done, my brother in law confided to me that he would have gladly settled for the $10K in arbitration and that it would probably have taken him over a decade to even sell a million dollars worth of crops. The utility
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    had to have their day in court, though. Update: So as I mentioned at the top of the story, and others have pointed out, I had some details wrong. I spoke to my sister last night, and I got a refresher. Rather than editing the original story, here
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    is a list of things that I messed up in telling the story: 1. This happened about 10 years ago. 2. My brother in law's original settlement offer was 60K, not 10K.
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    3. While they initially thought that the downed power lines were owned by a utility (possibly the one my sister
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    works for), they turned out to be privately owned by a quarry, and that's who he ended up suing. 4. The quarry didn't go to trial with this. They ultimately settled in excess of a million dollars, so there is no way for them to appeal this.
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    1. My brother in law initially offered to settle for tens of thousands of dollars, and they refused. 2. He lawyered up with my sister's assistance. My sister knew he was going to win this because as a defense attorney for a large utility in California, she'd been settling
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    cases like this all summer long. 3. After my brother in law lawyered up, the quarry ended up having to pay out in excess of a million dollars to settle the case as opposed to the tens of thousands that he was initially willing to settle for.
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    Here are a couple of commonly posted misconceptions that are flat out wrong: 1. This was an act of god, so no one should have had to pay, and my brother in law should have just sd it up. He didn't have to sit up because the owners of power lines are responsible for ensuring that damage to the
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    power lines doesn't impact nearby infrastructure. They're responsible for placing the lines in a manner that ensures they are a safe distance away from flammable objects. Failure to do that is negligence. He didn't sue over "acts of god" like the loss of power or the
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    damage to the lines. He sued because he could prove that their downed lines caught his property on fire, and he could also prove that this was preventable by following the pertinent building codes. See
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    2. My brother in law will never see a dime of that once the lawyers take their cut and the appeals are exhausted. The fact is that because they settled in arbitration, no appeal is possible. He received the majority of that money and used most of it to pay off the mortgage on the ranch and to repair the
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70
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    damage from the fire. He sank the rest of it into the sizeable mortgage on his house.
    via SomeoneYouDontKnow70

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