Attorneys sum up cases in PG&E trial linked to San Bruno explosion
By George Avalos, gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com
Posted: 07/26/2016 02:37:21 PM PDT | Updated: 33 min. ago
SAN FRANCISCO -- A prosecutor and a defense attorney painted sharply different portraits of PG&E's actions in the years before and the months after a fatal explosion in San Bruno during closing arguments to a jury on Tuesday in the embattled utility's criminal case.
A federal prosecutor claimed in his closing arguments that PG&E made a series of deliberate choices to break pipeline safety regulations as well as to intentionally obstruct an official government probe into the causes of the blast, which killed eight and leveled a San Bruno neighborhood in September 2010.
"PG&E is a company that lost its way," assistant U.S. attorney Jeffrey Schenk told the jury in his summation of the government's case against the utility. "For years, PG&E forced engineers to act more like business people than engineers. They made decisions to maximize profits instead of prioritizing safety."
A defense attorney, however, countered in his closing arguments, that PG&E employees and executives didn't intentionally violate the law.
"Nobody at PG&E is criminal," defense attorney Steven Bauer told the jury. "These are decent people, competent engineers, just trying to do their jobs."
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Prosecutors have maintained that PG&E officials and engineers were well aware that they were skirting federal rules by deliberately spiking pressure on their older and more fragile pipelines and intentionally not undertaking relatively costly water pressure tests on pipelines as a way to determine the safety of the pipes.
"The engineers were not confused," Schenk said. "They knew the differences between what the regulations were and what they were doing."
Defense attorneys, though, have countered that PG&E engineers were wrestling with a bewildering array of federal rules about what sort of tests to apply to pipelines in the company's aging system. Bauer argued that the prosecution failed to show a pattern of criminal conduct.
"What is this case about? It's an elaborate second-guessing exercise," Bauer said. "The employees never intentionally and wilfully violated the rules."
The day included not only the closing arguments, but also a lengthy hearing that involved sparring between the prosecution and the defense prior to the jury entering the courtroom. The judge decided to recess for the day before defense attorney Bauer had completed his closing arguments.
U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson said he would consider a prosecution motion that the jury be shown photographs of the explosion prior to the start of deliberations. The jury could get the case on Wednesday for its decision.
The utility has been charged with 12 counts of breaking federal laws, including one allegation that it obstructed a National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the explosion and 11 charges that it violated pipeline safety violations.
PG&E has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. If convicted on all the counts, PG&E faces a fine of up to $562 million.
Contact George Avalos at 408-859-5167. Follow him at Twitter.com/georgeavalos.
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