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Crews pump mud on Highway 101 after a mudslide Jan. 13, 2018, in Montecito, California. Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP[/caption] The first lawsuit has been filed over California’s deadly mudslides this month, naming as a defendant local utilities company Southern California Edison. The suit, filed on Jan. 12 and amended on Tuesday to include the local water district as a defendant, was brought on behalf of three individuals and a boutique store alleging damages from the Jan. 9 mudslides, which killed at least 20 people and destroyed 65 homes in the Montecito area of Santa Barbara. Foley Bezek Behle & Curtis and Joseph Liebman, a real estate attorney, both in Santa Barbara, filed the suit along with Alex “Trey” Robertson of Robertson & Associates in Westlake Village, California. The complaint alleges negligence and public nuisance claims and seeks compensation for property damages and economic losses, plus an unspecified amount of punitive damages. “The damages are going to be really catastrophic,” said Robertson, who has teamed with the same firms in half a dozen suits brought on behalf of about 100 victims of last month’s wildfires in Southern California. “Because unlike in the wildfire cases, where you have a house that burned down, typically a homeowner’s policy will cover the cost to rebuild it. For the mudflow, there’s not going to be any coverage from homeowner’s policies. Their properties are worth $10 million to 30 million or more, and they’ve been completely wiped out, and they have no insurance.” The complaint alleges that the Montecito Water District Financing Corp. was negligent in failing to shut off its main lines, which ruptured, flooding the area. As to Southern California Edison, much of the complaint mirrors earlier allegations that the region’s utility was negligent in maintaining pole-mounted transformers in nearby Ventura County, where the Thomas Fire destroyed more than 1,000 structures last month. The Thomas Fire, among the worst in California history, left much of the hillside above Montecito devoid of vegetation and susceptible to mudslides in the event of rain, the complaint says. Calls to the water district were not returned. Southern California Edison spokesman Steve Conroy wrote in an emailed statement: “Our current focus right now is on supporting first responders. Immediately following that effort, our crews will attempt to safely expedite restoration of power to customers in that area due to damaged equipment. In regards to the potential causes of the Thomas Fire, we understand that Cal Fire’s investigation is ongoing, and it would be premature for SCE to speculate about potential litigation associated with the recent mudslides.” A California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman said the Ventura County Fire Department, not the state, was investigating the cause of the Thomas Fire. A call to the Ventura County Fire Department was not returned. Utilities have been named as causes of past wildfires in California. In 2013, Southern California Edison paid a $37 million fine to the California Public Utilities Commission over three utility poles that caused a 2007 wildfire in Malibu. But representing California wildfire victims is becoming a growing mass tort for the plaintiffs bar. In October, a group of five law firms, including Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy and Morgan & Morgan, launched FireLawsuit.com, an online resource for victims of the Northern California fires, which killed 42 people. Gerald Singleton, of Singleton Law Firm in Solana Beach, California, also partnered with Dallas-based Baron & Budd, San Diego firms Dixon Diab & Chambers and Thorsnes Bartolotta McGuire, and his father, Terry Singleton, a solo practitioner in San Diego, to create a team that goes by the name “California Fire Lawyers.” That team has so far filed lawsuits on behalf of 700 victims of the Northern California fires against Pacific Gas & Electric and, with the addition of Myers, Widders, Gibson, Jones & Feingold in Ventura, California, 50 victims of last month’s fires in Southern California. Singleton said he planned to file lawsuits in the coming weeks on behalf of mudslide victims. “One of our employees was a victim,” he said. “Her car was swept way, all the way into the ocean, and her house is under about a foot of mud.”