Judge to Keep Most Edison Data Sealed

A judge deciding a legal battle between prosecutors and Southern California Edison Co. said Wednesday that he will probably bar disclosure of most, but not all of the disputed papers sealed during last month’s raid on Edison offices.

At a hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court, Judge William R. Pounders said there appears to be no legal grounds to withhold about 20 pages--but that most of the documents are privileged or beyond the scope of a continuing criminal investigation of Edison’s role in last year’s Calabasas wildfire.

In identifying the page numbers of papers he is likely to release, Pounders made it clear that prosecutors will not be getting half a dozen internal reports and memos discussing the cause of the fire, which broke out Oct. 21, 1996, and raged for several days.

But Pounders’ preliminary ruling, which he said he expects to make formal in the next few days, does not appear to stymie the criminal investigation. Officials with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention are poring over thousands of additional pages of documents that were seized during the search of Edison offices Sept. 29 and 30. And other aspects of the investigation are continuing as well.

On Wednesday, for example, Pounders approved a motion authorizing the destructive testing of a lightning arrester by an expert working with the Los Angeles district attorney’s office, which is representing the forestry department in the investigation. The arrester, an electrical device that was atop a power tower at the fire scene, may provide evidence in the case.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Michael Cabral and Edison lawyers declined to comment after the hearing.

The fire swept 13,000 acres of the Santa Monica Mountains, burning 11 homes and other structures and critically injuring a firefighter. The forestry department, which concluded that the fire resulted from Edison’s failure to trim trees that brushed against a power line, is investigating the company under a state law that makes it a felony to recklessly cause a fire that results in serious bodily injury.

Edison says the fire might just as well have been caused by windblown debris hitting power lines, in which case it would not be at fault. And after news reports of the Edison raid, a woman came forward to say she saw the blaze kindled by sparks from the backfire of a truck passing near the fire scene on the Ventura Freeway.

About 50 state investigators and local law enforcement officers seized documents, damaged electrical equipment and tree limbs at Edison’s Rosemead headquarters and several branch offices during the raid.

During the search, Edison lawyers quickly arranged for a special court-appointed master to take possession of about 200 pages of records pending a ruling on its assertions that the documents were privileged--and thus immune to disclosure.