Pacific Gas & Electric headquarters at 77 Beale Street in San Francisco. Photo: Jason Doiy/ALMFollowing Guilty Plea Over Wildfire and Bankruptcy Exit, PG&E Makes General Counsel Switch
John Simon, who currently serves as the executive vice president of law and strategy, is slated to retake the role of general counsel on Aug. 15.
July 31, 2020 at 02:47 PM
3 minute read
San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. announced this week that its former interim CEO will take over as general counsel in August.
The move comes a month after the company completed restructuring and exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy and a month after it pleaded guilty to its equipment causing a wildfire that killed over 80 people and destroyed thousands of properties in Butte County, California, in 2018.
John Simon, who currently serves as the executive vice president of law and strategy, is slated to retake the role of general counsel Aug. 15, according to Thursday's Securities and Exchange Commission filing. He will take over for Janet Loduca.
John R. Simon of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
Simon served as the company's general counsel from March 2017 to January 2019. During his tenure as general counsel, the company was accused of recklessness that led to a wildfire that killed 84 people and destroyed 18,804 structures. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection determined that the Nov. 8, 2018, Camp Fire in Butte County was caused by electrical lines owned by PG&E. The company agreed that it would plead guilty in March.
In June, PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter in connection with the deaths in Butte County Superior Court. The company was fined $4 million, and no one in the company was sentenced to prison for the fire.
"No words from me can ever reduce the magnitude of that devastation," then-CEO Bill Johnson said in during the June 16 guilty plea hearing.
"Our equipment started that fire and destroyed the towns of Paradise, Concow and severely burned Magalia," Johnson said.
Loduca was tapped to become general counsel of the company in January 2019 when Simon was named interim CEO, a role he served until May 2019.
With Loduca as general counsel and Simon as interim CEO, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In June, Johnson announced the company completed the bankruptcy and restructuring process. During the guilty plea hearing in Butte County Superior Court, Johnson said once the bankruptcy process was complete, the company would be paying approximately $25.5 billion in settlements to the victims of the fire and Butte County agencies.
Loduca has worked for PG&E in a variety of other roles since 2000 including director and counsel of the generation section, senior director of analysis and rates, chief of staff to the office of the president, vice president of corporate relations, vice president of investor relations and deputy general counsel.
It is not clear if Loduca has another job lined up. She did not respond to request for comment on LinkedIn on Friday. A spokesperson for PG&E said Loduca and Simon were not available for comment.
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