Case Facts
This is the name of the fire that spread through Rapid River Valley, Midlands.
What is the Dip Fire?
This exhibit contains the CVs for each expert witness.
What is Exhibit 13?
The party representative for the defense.
Who is Aggie Stackhouse?
These 2 witnesses were in the car that hit the utility pole.
Who are Landon Norris & Eden Yamal?
This term refers to a failure to behave with the level of care that someone of ordinary prudence would have exercised under the same circumstances that directly and proximately causes harm to another.
What is negligence? (Benetti v. Duffy)
This is the nickname for the road that the utility pole sat beside.
What is Deadman's Curve?
This exhibit outlines the rules and guidelines MG&E had in place at the time of the incident.
What is Exhibit 4 (MG&E’s D&M Manual)?
These two systems were used by MG&E to monitor their utility poles.
What are the SCADA & EMS?
These two MG&E employees contacted the driver in the accident before trial.
Who are Aggie Stackhouse and Jarvis Owens III?
Chambers v. By the Book Publishing, Ltd explains this about the hearsay rule.
What is: The hearsay rule is only implicated where an out-of-court statement is being used for the truth of the matter asserted; if it only matters whether the out-of-court statement was made (not whether it was true), then the hearsay rule is not implicated?
The number of days it took for the fire to be contained.
What is 3 days?
This is the number of feet between Pole #4742 and Transmission tower 112, as shown in Exhibits 3a & b.
What is 1,000 ft?
This MG&E employee offered to check on the pole twice on January 1, 2026.
Who is Finley Gray?
This term describes what happens when insulation fails and electricity is no longer held to its confined path and “jumps” outside of it.
What is arcing?
This Midlands law provides a heightened standard of care for public utility companies like MG&E.
What is Section 1.4 of the Midlands Electric Reliability Code?
The approximate number of acres burned in the wildfire.
What is 3,000 acres?
This exhibit describes elevated inspection from bucket truck revealed surface rust spreading to exterior of transformer and recommends replacement within 6 months.
What is Exhibit 5b (Dec. 2024 inspection report of Pole #4742)?
This was lost in the April 2025 MG&E system crash.
What are the early 2025 Inspection Reports?
This formula was used by Dr. Nat Prescott to calculate how fast the car who hit Pole #4742 was travelling.
What is the critical speed formula?
This case law adopted the doctrine of “unavoidable accident” as an affirmative defense available to defendants facing a negligence claim.
What is Carter v. Meyer?
If Landon Norris does not testify, both parties agree to this stipulation.
What is Stipulation 15: Norris passed away as a result of a heart attack prior to trial and that Norris’s heart attack and death have no bearing on Norris’s actions on January 1, 2026?
In Exhibit 9a, Morgan Jacob suggests this.
What is supplemental training on vegetation and right-of-way inspection?
Name the 3 affirmative defenses for MG&E.
What are: 1) A third party crashing into MG&E’s utility pole; 2) The storm; and 3) The foliage in the area.
Name 3 of the 12 acts/omissions by MG&E that the Plaintiff should evaluate for negligence.
What is: Failing to sufficiently train its employees; Failing to sufficiently maintain its electrical infrastructure; Failing to sufficiently maintain foliage near its electrical lines; Failing to sufficiently fund its safety operations; Failing to sufficiently enforce its own policies; Failing to sufficiently respond to and address its own policy violations; Failing to sufficiently inspect and repair its utility poles; Failing to properly monitor weather conditions leading up to and during the Dip Fire; Failing to observe and / or heed signs that indicated or should have indicated the likelihood of equipment failing and / or malfunctioning in such a manner as to ignite a fire; Failing to shut down the affected area of the power grid in a timely manner; Failing to comply with applicable statutory and / or professional standards of care; Otherwise causing or exacerbating the Dip Fire.
This case law states: The notion that a risk must be “foreseeable” for a defendant to have violated its duty of care does not require that the defendant be able to anticipate the target of the harm or the precise way the harm will occur. Instead, it requires only that the defendant should have foreseen the general type of risk that caused the harm.
What is Haug v. Kolb?