A Livermore-based company will pay $100,000 in penalties and costs because Santa Clara County prosecutors say it ruptured gas lines repeatedly over five years, although an attorney for the company strongly denied the allegations.
A judge on Nov. 20 ordered MCH Electric to pay the civil settlement following an investigation that included the help of Alameda County prosecutors.
The prosecution is one of the first in California that involves the state’s Dig Safe Act enacted in 2016 to strengthen existing laws regarding excavation safety.
Prosecutors said MCH Electric broke gas lines 15 times over the past five years. An investigation began when Milpitas police reported a series of problems at the company’s construction sites in 2017.
Alameda County prosecutors joined the investigation when they uncovered alleged violations in their county, including in the cities of Pleasanton and Dublin.
The suit against MCH Electric alleged that the company did not call 9-1-1 immediately after rupturing a line, that it failed to call 8-1-1 to ask that lines be marked ahead of digging, and that it used backhoe equipment too close to utility lines than the law permits. No one was injured in any of the gas line breaks.
Charles Doerksen, an attorney representing MCH Electric, said on Nov. 21 that a news release the district attorney issued about the settlement was “grossly misleading.”
Doerksen noted that the settlement states that MCH Electric did not admit fault, and said “virtually every one” of the lines hit was one “that the utility mismarked.”
He said the DA’s office had threatened a lawsuit but then offered to settle for an amount significantly less than the cost to litigate the case, “a lawsuit that I very strongly believe that MCH Electric could have won,” he added.
“MCH Electric is shocked and disappointed at how the DA has misrepresented both the nature of the settlement and the underlying facts,” Doerksen said.
— Bay City News Service
