Published in Medium.com on October 27, 2018
The LA Court of Appeals will be ruling very soon on whether to accept the case into whether victims of the SoCalGas blowout of 2015 could receive restitution as a result of a criminal case against the gas company.
At stake are the victims’ right to collect restitution as delineated in Article I, Section 28(c) of the California constitution. Currently victims’ right to restitution is protected by Marsy’s Law, otherwise known as the California Victims’ Bill of Rights which was approved by voters in 2008.
The original case concerned misdemeanor criminal charges filed by the county over SoCalGas’s failure to timely report the existence of a leak at the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility. The gas company was allowed to plead no contest in September 2016 to one of the charges, while the other charges were dismissed. Then the court denied the victims’ request for restitution.
The section of the constitution that is being violated is known as Marsy’s Law in honor of Marsalee Nicholas who was murdered by an ex-boyfriend on November 30, 1983. In late February 2008, California non-profit corporation Marsy’s Law: Justice for Crime Victims proposed Marsy’s Law as a way of giving crime victims, including businesses, constitutionally protected rights including priority when it comes to collecting restitution.
In the case of the county’s case against SoCalGas, the county and city of Los Angeles both stand to get paid while the victims, those who have been directly harmed by the gas company’s hesitation in reporting the leak, will be left out. It is hoped that state attorney general Xavier Becerra will do the right thing and make sure victims receive the restitution to which they are legally entitled.
If this decision stands, a precedent will be set that can be used against victims in other cases to deny them their constitutional right to restitution.