Homeowners have started filing lawsuits against the Southern California Edison utility company, claiming it’s responsible for one of the blazes that tore through the Los Angeles area last week — the deadly Eaton Fire — citing alleged witness accounts and videos from social media that show flames breaking out underneath transmission towers.

“Based upon our investigation, our discussions with various consultants, the public statements of SCE, and the video evidence of the fire’s origin, we believe that the Eaton Fire was ignited because of SCE’s failure to de-energize its overhead wires, which traverse Eaton Canyon,” said Richard Bridgford, attorney with the Newport Beach law firm Bridgford, Gleason and Artinian, in a statement Monday after filing a lawsuit on behalf of Altadena homeowner Jeremy Gursey in Los Angeles Superior Court.

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Criminal Justice

Former Moody’s GC gets prison time for tax-filing failure on $54M income while life ‘all fell apart’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 29, 2024, 9:06 am CDT

Updated: The former general counsel at the Moody’s Corp., a financial services company, was sentenced to eight months in prison last week for failing to file tax returns while earning $54 million.

Former general counsel John Goggins, 63, of Chatham, New Jersey, was sentenced Oct. 24 after pleading guilty to willfully failing to pay tax returns during a four-year period. He has already paid court-ordered restitution of $3.11 million and faces an additional fine of $40,000, according to an Oct. 24 press release from the Department of Justice.

Law360 had coverage of the sentencing hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Andre M. Espinosa of the District of New Jersey.

Trial attorney Kenneth Vert of the DOJ’s Tax Division argued that Goggins deserved 22 months in prison, according to Law360. Vert said Goggins “only filed returns where the tax authority caught him for not filing,” and his behavior amounted to “deliberate defiance of the tax law.”

The lawyer for Goggins, Sharon L. McCarthy, sought probation for her client, Law360 reported. She acknowledged that the case was “puzzling.” Goggins was able to perform well in his job while his personal life “all fell apart,” she said.

His problems included failing to renew his law license and failing to make car payments, resulting in the vehicle being repossessed twice.

Goggins was stressed by a difficult marriage, memory impairment and the 2015 death of his daughter, according to courtroom remarks cited by Law360. He is now getting mental health treatment.

Goggins “regrets and accepts full responsibility” for failing to file tax returns, according to a statement provided to Law.com and Law.360.

“He is grateful to the court for considering the comprehensive measures of accountability and restitution he has taken in connection with his misdemeanor offenses,” the statement said. “He looks forward to putting this matter behind him and will be timely filing all tax returns going forward.”

Updated Oct. 29 at 2:05 p.m. to correct the amount of the fine and a misattribution.

Many of us still get a chill running down our spines when we hear about bank failures and bailouts. After all, it was less than 15 years ago when we went through one of the worst economic disasters in history, and institutions such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers Inc., American International Group Inc. and others became famous for the wrong reasons. The Great Recession took years to recover from, and some of its effects can still be felt to this day.

So in March, when several banks collapsed in what were the largest bank failures since that financial crisis in 2007 and 2008, you’ll forgive some of us from getting a bad feeling of deja vu.

This time, it’s the tech sector driving things. Silicon Valley Bank, the largest institution to go bust in March, served a large number of tech startups, while other failed banks, such as Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank, were known as go-to institutions for the cryptocurrency industry.

The government moved quickly to intervene, with President Joe Biden reassuring the public that, “Our banking system is safe,” and promising that customers would be made whole, according to CNN. Biden also called for new banking rules and tighter regulations.

In this episode of the Legal Rebels Podcast, Nathan E. Seiler, a partner at the Am Law 100 law firm Ballard Spahr, talks to the ABA Journal’s Victor Li about the Silicon Valley Bank failure and what it means for the larger financial sector.

Seiler, who is chair of the firm’s Business and Transactions Department, also talks about how this batch of bank failures is different than what happened in 2007 and 2008 and what, if any, reforms and changes that we might see from the federal government.

See also:

ABAJournal.com: “Law firms have ‘another risk to contemplate’ after failure of bank that catered to their needs”