Knut Johnson, Senior Counsel at Singleton Schreiber in San Diego, was recently featured in The Californian's article, "“David vs. Goliath”: Residents File Lawsuit Over Moss Landing Battery Storage Fire".
The article provides a comprehensive overview of the recent environmental lawsuit filed against Vistra by Singleton Schreiber and famed environmentalist Erin Brockovich on behalf of victims of the 2025 Moss Landing Battery Fire.
According to the plaintiffs, Vistra had acted negligently in failing to provide adequate fire safety measures and failed to safely store their lithium-ion battery stock. The suit alleges that this contributed to a prolonging of the fire and exposed residents to toxic metals, increasing their chances of health complications such as respiratory distress, eye and throat irritation, and headaches.
"When there's exposure to toxins like that you may not know for a very long time what the effect is going to be. What we are focused on are the more immediate problems of people who had to evacuate or are concerned about going back to remediate or clean their house or boat, " said Mr. Johnson, who added that, "It's much more dangerous to stack up lithium-ion batteries all on top of each other underneath a roof because when there is thermal runaway it can't be stopped. It just goes from one battery to the next battery until they're all on fire, and that's exactly what happened here."
The article closes by the plaintiffs characterizing the lawsuit as a "David VS Goliath" battle against powerful corporations.
From Mr. Johnson: "These big companies are going to fight back with everything they have to try and keep their very large profits. We want the people who did things wrong to own up to their part in it and clean up."
