Jury seated in criminal trial over deadly pipeline blast
Source: Associated Press
Jury seated in criminal trial over deadly pipeline blast
Sudhin Thanawala, Associated Press
Updated 5:23 pm, Thursday, June 16, 2016
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) A jury was seated Thursday in a criminal trial on a charge that one of the country's largest utility companies obstructed investigators after a deadly pipeline explosion in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Opening statements were scheduled to start, but final jury selection took up much of the day. Attorneys will make their opening remarks on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson said.
The blast of the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. natural gas pipeline six years ago sent a giant plume of fire into the air, killing eight people and destroying 38 homes in the city of San Bruno. During the investigation that followed, prosecutors say the San Francisco-based utility misled federal officials about how it was identifying high-risk pipelines.
The standard the company used violated safety regulations and led to a failure to classify the San Bruno pipeline and other similar pipelines as high risk and properly assess them, prosecutors said in a 2014 indictment. The company also faces charges that it violated pipeline safety laws by ignoring shoddy record-keeping and failing to identify threats to its larger natural gas pipelines.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Pacific-Gas-set-to-face-jury-over-deadly-pipeline-8228138.php
marble falls
(56,358 posts)harrose
(380 posts)That had to be painful. I hope no one was hurt. Why would they seat them over a pipeline blast?
(Sorry... couldn't resist)
homegirl
(1,419 posts)wants to pass the costs on to their customers. There is, and has been, a maintenance charge on PG&E utility bills for decades. They didn't maintain the supply system and now they are trying to pass the costs on, second time, to customers!