A recent filing in California’s 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego marks the latest attempt by Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas & Electric Co. (SDG&E) to recover $379 million in costs incurred by wildfires that raced through Southern California in 2007.

SDG&E is challenging a decision last year by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) denying its request to recover the costs, and subsequently denying the combination utility’s request for a rehearing of its regulatory case. The utility is asking the appeals court to vacate the CPUC decision and allow recovery of the 2007 wildfire costs in its utility rates following a reasonableness review.

“The CPUC committed numerous legal errors including a failure to follow its own legal standards for assessing the reasonableness and prudence of utility management decisions and the application of a perfection standard that depends on hindsight bias,” a SDG&E spokesperson said.

The CPUC and other stakeholders will file responses to SDG&E prior to the appeals court deciding whether it will hear the case.

The fires in October 2007 destroyed 1,300 homes, killed two people, injured 40 firefighters and forced 10,000 people to be evacuated. SDG&E eventually spent $2.4 billion to resolve more than 2,000 lawsuits related to three separate fires.

SDG&E has maintained that factors beyond its control were at work in the blazes, including extreme Santa Ana winds, a telecommunications wire hitting an SDG&E power line, and a tree limb falling into the power lines because of the high winds.

The case and more recent experiences among utilities and more wildfires last fall prompted a push by California legislators and the governor to address the state’s use of the legal liability concept of inverse condemnation (IC), allowing utilities to be responsible for fire damages when their equipment is found to be part of the cause of the fires, even if they have followed all the accepted rules in preparedness and planning.

“While the California courts have applied IC to utilities so that the costs of property damage may be spread as widely as possible, the CPUC has ignored state law by refusing to permit such cost spreading through rates,” the spokesperson said.

Lawmakers have given up in finding a solution to IC’s use for this year, but utilities like SDG&E are continuing to push for relief.