Lawyers begin opening statements in lawsuit connected to PG&E natural gas explosion
Aug. 9—Bakersfield-based civil attorney Daniel Rodriguez stood before a jury Monday and tried to take them to the moment when everything changed for a local family, when, in a nanosecond, a domestic scene of peaceful bliss became a hellish race for survival.
"The sky turned orange, the windows shattered, the air was sucked out of the room making it hard to breathe," Rodriguez told the jury, his own voice taking on the sound of someone struggling for air.
Just seconds before, the scene had included a new mother, a grandmother and a 17-day-old baby boy in the kitchen of the family's new dream home in rural south Bakersfield.
It was about 3:30 p.m., Nov. 13, 2015 when a massive explosion shattered the serenity of their lives. The heat was fast becoming unbearable. It soon became clear, if they stayed in the house, they would die.
"Mom, we gotta get out," the veteran attorney choked out as he placed himself in the shoes of the new mother, one of his clients, on that afternoon.
Gloria Ruckman gathered her then-infant son, Robert Elias Ruckman, wrapped a jacket around him, pressed him against her chest and headed toward the door, followed by her mother, the boy's grandmother, Amalia Leal.
"The door swings open, the trees are on fire," Rodriguez told the jurors.
It's so hot, the cars were melting in the driveway. The roar of the natural gas-fueled fire sounded like a jet engine. But the three somehow made it out.
As they ran across Wible Road, Leal could see the back of her daughter's clothes being eaten away by the intense heat, exposing blisters — and steam — rising from her burned skin.
Both women would spend weeks in a local burn unit, undergoing painful washing and scraping of their dead, burned skin and receiving skin grafts. Ruckman had fourth-degree burns down to her tendon and bone.
Rodriguez is representing the Ruckmans in a lawsuit against PG&E, the owner of the 3-foot diameter natural gas pipeline that ruptured and exploded that day. Also named as defendants are McFarland-based Big N Deep Agricultural Development Co., the contractor whose employee was killed when the equipment he was operating cut into the underground pipeline and ignited the flammable gas. Ag-Wise Enterprises Inc. and others are also named.
There are so many attorneys present on this case, the hearings had to be moved from a smaller courtroom on Truxtun Avenue to traffic court off Buck Owens Boulevard.
Rodriguez was the first to present his opening statement Monday.
The case is pretty simple, he said. The facts are straightforward.
The giant utility known as PG&E, he said, "decided to cut corners on safety."
The company cut back on staffing levels needed to do the job right, and cut back on equipment, too, he said.
After the San Bruno explosion in 2010, which killed eight people, injured dozens more, and destroyed 38 homes, PG&E was convicted of six felonies — including obstruction of justice — and in the wake of the disaster, vowed to make the safety of the public its top priority.
"As soon as the heat died down ... they went back to business as usual," Rodriguez told the jury Monday.
The pressure on PG&E locators, those employees charged with locating and marking off the large, high-pressure lines like the one that exploded in Bakersfield, is immense, Rodriguez said.
In the Bakersfield case, these employees were forced to start falsifying records. "If they didn't," Rodriguez told the jury, "they ran the risk of getting fired."
PG&E is disputing Rodriguez's claim that the utility is to blame for the 2015 explosion. There's much more to come in this civil lawsuit.
Reporter Steven Mayer can be reached at 661-395-7353. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter: @semayerTBC.
