There are lots of wild fires in California, but not all of the fires are wildfires.

In today’s story, one fire is actually caused by an electric company.

Unfortunately, the electric company isn’t willing to admit responsibility or pay for any damage.

That is, until the case goes to court.

Let’s see what happens…

Won’t compensate me for my fence? Then compensate me 100 times as much for my crops!

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.

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.

The electric company told him to sue them.

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 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.

The wife was able to help her husband.

At first she was concerned that this 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 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.

She helped him find a very reputable lawyer with a solid record of winning cases like these.

The court realized that the electric company owed much more than $10,000.

Not knowing what they were up 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.

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 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.

It gets even better…

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 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 had to have their day in court, though.

Wow! That’s a lot of money!

I bet the electric company regrets not paying the $10,000.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This person thinks he did the right thing by going to court.

Another person shares why the electric company probably didn’t settle.

A California resident points out this is why utilities are so expensive.

This reader liked the lawsuit.

LOL – yes, maybe he should start selling guacamole.

It’s nice that the law was on the ranch owners side!

How satisfying.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.