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28 Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP 767 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10153-0119

WEIL, GOTSHAL & MANGES LLP 

Stephen Karotkin (pro hac vice) 

(stephen.karotkin@weil.com) 

Ray C. Schrock, P.C. (pro hac vice) 

(ray.schrock@weil.com) 

Jessica Liou (pro hac vice) 

(jessica.liou@weil.com) 

Matthew Goren (pro hac vice) 

(matthew.goren@weil.com)| 

767 Fifth Avenue 

New York, NY 10153-0119 

Tel: 212 310 8000 

Fax: 212 310 8007 

Attorneys for Debtors 

and Debtors in Possession 

KELLER & BENVENUTTI LLP 

Tobias S. Keller (#151445) 

(tkeller@kellerbenvenutti.com) 

Peter J. Benvenutti (#60566) 

(pbenvenutti@kellerbenvenutti.com) 

Jane Kim (#298192) 

(jkim@kellerbenvenutti.com) 

650 California Street, Suite 1900 

San Francisco, CA 94108 

Tel: 415 496 6723 

Fax: 650 636 9251 

UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURT 

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 

SAN FRANCISCO DIVISION 

In re: 

PG&E CORPORATION, 

 - and - 

PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC COMPANY, 

Debtors. 

 Affects PG&E Corporation 

 Affects Pacific Gas and Electric Company 

 Affects both Debtors 

* All papers shall be filed in the Lead Case, 

No. 19-30088 (DM).

 Case No. 19-30088 (DM) 

Chapter 11 

(Lead Case) (Jointly Administered) 

DECLARATION OF ELIZABETH 

COLLIER IN SUPPORT OF 

DEBTORS’ PRELIMINARY 

OPPOSITION TO TIGER NATURAL 

GAS, INC.’S MOTION FOR RELIEF 

FROM THE AUTOMATIC STAY 

PURSUANT TO 11 U.S.C. § 362(d)(1) 

Date: November 13, 2019 

Time: 10:00 a.m. 

Place: United States Bankruptcy Court 

 Courtroom 17, 16th Floor 

 San Francisco, CA 94102 

 

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I, Elizabeth Collier, pursuant to section 1746 of title 28 of the United States Code, hereby 

declare under penalty of perjury that the following is true and correct to the best of my knowledge, 

information, and belief: 

1. I am employed as Managing Counsel, Litigation, in the Law Department of Pacific 

Gas and Electric Company (the “Utility”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of PG&E Corporation 

(“PG&E Corp.” and together with Utility, the “Debtors” in the above-captioned chapter 11 cases 

(the “Chapter 11 Cases”)). In my current role, I am responsible for the development and successful 

implementation of strategy for the active and potential litigation facing the Debtors. I also supervise 

the eight (8) other lawyers in the Litigation Group (a component of the Law Department), oversee 

their assignments, and monitor their workloads. My responsibilities as Managing Counsel require 

me on a regular basis to assess, and attempt to balance, the demands on the lawyers in the Litigation 

Group, and to ensure that those lawyers have the capacity needed to satisfy those demands. 

2. I joined the Utility in 2001 and have held various positions of increasing responsibility 

working on litigation, regulatory, and commercial matters since that time. I obtained my Juris 

Doctorate from University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1990 and was admitted to 

the State Bar of California that same year. 

3. I submit this declaration in support of the Utility’s Opposition to the Motion for Relief 

from the Automatic Stay Pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 362(d)(1) (the “Motion”) filed by Tiger Natural 

Gas, Inc. (“Tiger”), Dkt No 4322, which seeks to seeks to lift the automatic stay to pursue Tiger’s 

claims in Tiger Natural Gas, Inc. v. Pacific Gas and Electric Company, et al., Case No. 4:16-CV06711 (JSW) (N.D. Cal.) (the “Tiger Action”). I am authorized to submit this declaration on behalf 

of the Utility and, if called upon, would testify to the facts set forth herein. 

4. The facts set forth in this declaration are based upon my personal knowledge, my 

review of relevant documents, information provided to me by the Debtors, or my opinion based 

upon experience, knowledge, and information concerning the matters discussed herein. 

5. As detailed below, if the Tiger Action were to proceed at this time, it would impose a 

substantial and disruptive burden on the Utility and would meaningfully risk adverse consequences 

to the Debtors’ reorganization efforts. 

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The Resources Implicated by the Tiger Action 

6. I agree with Tiger’s assertion that the Tiger Action “presents complicated fact patterns 

over several different divisions within Debtor PG&E, a series of complex business torts, and a rubric 

of procedural and discovery wrangling.” Motion at 5. The following Tiger statements regarding 

the Utility billing and collections system—CC&B—that is a primary focus of the Tiger Action, are 

also accurate: “CC&B is a complicated Oracle-based system modified by Debtor for its services,” 

id. at 4; “CC&B utilizes a complicated process for generating blue bills and allocating payments 

between Debtor PG&E and CTAs,” id.; “the course of discovery before the District Court reflects 

a complicated background,” id. at 5; “the parties analyzed millions of transactions from tens of 

thousands of accounts from the CC&B system, itself a remarkably complex program,” id. Tiger is 

also correct in its statement that the “interplay between the regulatory environment and the legal 

framework for many of the business torts alleged in the [Tiger Action] complaint create additional 

complexity.” Id. at 5. 

7. The parties in the Tiger Action have not yet conducted expert discovery, submitted 

motions for summary judgment, filed Daubert motions, or undertaken any pre-trial briefing or 

otherwise prepared for trial. As of January 29, 2019, expert discovery was not set to close for over 

three months (on May 6, 2019), the deadline for dispositive motions was nearly five months away 

(June 21, 2019), Daubert motions were not due for six months (August 2, 2019), and trial was not 

scheduled to begin for over seven-and-a-half months (September 16, 2019). 

8. Permitting the Tiger Action to continue would require the Utility to engage repeatedly 

and fully in the various complex legal and factual issues presented by the matter. Indeed, if United 

Energy Trading LLC v. Pacific Gas and Electric Company, et al (“UET”), Case No. 3:15-CV-02383 

(RS) (N.D. Cal.) (the “UET Action”), a similar lawsuit commenced by the same law firm in which 

CC&B is also at issue, is any indication, the parties will fiercely litigate each remaining stage of the 

Tiger Action. In the UET Action, which had progressed further than the Tiger Action as of the 

Petition Date, and regarding which UET brought motion for relief from stay (since taken off 

calendar), “the parties disclosed and deposed several forensic accountants, economists, and other 

experts,” submitted “competing motions for summary judgment,” and filed “dueling motions under 

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Fed. R. Evid. 702 and Daubert.” See United Energy Trading’s Motion for Relief from the 

Automatic Stay Pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 362(d)(1) (Dkt No. 4323) at 4. The Utility was also forced 

to file motions for summary judgment, which ultimately were successful, in order to dismiss UET’s 

claims against individual Utility employees who are also named as defendants in the Tiger Action. 

I expect that any further litigation of the Tiger Action would be a similarly protracted undertaking. 

I also expect that any trial in the Tiger Action would be lengthy and complex, and likely involve 

dozens of witnesses and significant pre- and post-trial briefing. 

9. Given the highly complex nature of the relevant legal and factual issues, and because 

significant litigation remains, allowing the Tiger Action to proceed would necessitate that the 

Debtors devote to the defense of the lawsuit significant resources from at least three separate Utility 

Departments: (i) the Law Department (specifically, the Litigation Group), (ii) the Information 

Technology Department (the “IT Department”), and (iii) the Customer Care Department. 

10. The Litigation Group would be significantly involved in any continued litigation of 

the Tiger Action given the intricate legal and factual issues involved. Some of these issues have 

been raised by other core transport agents who have brought legal action against the Utility (e.g., 

UET), however each core transport agent, including Tiger, raises different theories requiring new 

discovery, new depositions, new expert analysis, and new briefing. The Litigation Group is most 

familiar with these complex, ever-evolving issues given the similar prior cases commenced against 

the Utility, and it is thus necessary that they be substantively involved in each of these phases of 

litigation. Moreover, the Utility has significant regulatory requirements concerning its relationship 

with core transport agents and the use of customer information. These regulatory requirements 

require a high degree of oversight from the assigned attorney in Litigation Group in order to avoid 

a compliance failure. In addition, the assigned attorney in the Litigation Group would be responsible 

for assisting outside counsel in accessing needed information and witnesses from the IT Department, 

the Customer Care Department, and third-party contractors previously engaged by the IT 

Department. Given the complexity of the database at issue, and the fact that many of the IT and 

Customer Care personnel involved to date have moved to other roles in the Utility or left the 

company, this coordination alone is a highly time-intensive undertaking. In effect, the assigned 

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Litigation Group attorney has become the subject-matter expert on the issues and a necessary 

participant in the litigation. 

11. While there are other groups within the Law Department, those groups focus on, and 

have experience and expertise in, other areas of the law. Lawyers in these other Law Department 

groups, even if they had excess capacity (which they do not), are not interchangeable with the 

Litigation Group in terms of having the subject-matter expertise necessary to manage and support 

the Tiger Action, or to otherwise augment the staffing of the Litigation Group to increase its 

capacity. 

12. The IT Department would similarly be required to expend significant resources in 

connection with the Tiger Action, should this Court allow it to move forward. Specifically, the IT 

Department would need to interface regularly with the third-party contractors familiar with CC&B 

to pull and analyze large volumes of data from PG&E’s system in a method that is inconsistent with 

PG&E’s daily operational CC&B practices. 

13. The Customer Care Department would also be involved in any further litigation of the 

Tiger Action, as is underscored by the fact that two employees within the Customer Care 

Department—Mr. William Chen and Ms. Tanisha Robinson Brown—are named as defendants in 

the Tiger Action. The Customer Care Department handles all communications with the Utility’s 

customers, including customer billing through CC&B, and its participation in the Utility’s defense 

of the Tiger Action would thus be crucial. As with the IT Department, the Customer Care 

Department would need to devote significant resources to assist with the multitude of difficult, 

unresolved factual disputes at issue, including with the proper gathering and dissemination of 

information related to CC&B. 

The Availability of the Resources Implicated by the Tiger Action 

14. The Litigation Group is currently operating beyond full capacity and simply cannot 

spare the resources that would be required to litigate the Tiger Action properly. As the Court is 

aware, in addition to these Chapter 11 Cases, the Debtors are currently participating in the following 

significant proceedings for which the Litigation Group is responsible, among others: (a) In re PG&E 

Corporation and Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Case No. 3:19-cv-05257 (N.D. Cal.), 

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regarding the estimation of the Debtors’ liability for claims arising from the 2017 and 2018 wildfires 

(the “Estimation Proceedings”); (b) a trial of certain Tubbs Fire preference plaintiffs’ claims in the 

California North Bay Fire Cases, Judicial Council Coordination Proceedings 4955, proceeding in 

front of the Honorable Teri L. Jackson in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco 

(the “Tubbs Action”); (c) California Public Utilities Commission (“CPUC”) Investigation No. 

I-19-06-015, regarding the October 2017 wildfires, which may be expanded to include 2018 Camp 

Fire (the “Wildfire OII”), and (d) the Grand Jury investigation into the Camp Fire initiated by the 

Butte County District Attorney and California Attorney General (the “Camp Fire Investigation”). 

The Debtors are also currently participating in the following additional significant proceedings for 

which other groups within the Law Department are responsible: (a) CPUC Investigation No. 19-

09-016, regarding the competing reorganization plans pursuant to which the Debtors may ultimately 

emerge from these Chapter 11 Cases; (b) the Utility’s 2020 General Rate Case at the CPUC, No. 

A.18-12-009; (c) the CPUC’s investigation into the Utility’s locate and mark practices; and (d) the 

CPUC’s upcoming investigation into the Utility’s Public Safety Power Shutoff Program. 

15. At the same time, the Debtors are addressing the ramifications of several wildfires, 

including the Kincade Fire, which have recently occurred in their territory and which the Litigation 

Group is responsible for investigating. The Debtors are also engaged in significant efforts to prevent 

the occurrence of any additional wildfires during the 2019 wildfire season, including through the 

use of Public Safety Power Shutoffs (“PSPS”) during times when high-risk weather conditions are 

forecasted. 

16. Given its familiarity with the Utility and experience in managing large, complex 

litigation matters, the Litigation Group is significantly involved in these Chapter 11 Cases, the 

Estimation Proceedings, the Tubbs Action, the Wildfire OII, and the Camp Fire Investigation, 

among other responsibilities. Each of these matters is proceeding on a highly expedited timeframe, 

with the Estimation Proceedings, the Tubbs Action, and the Wildfire OII scheduled to culminate via 

trial or similar hearings December 2019 or early in 2020, confirmation hearings in these Chapter 11 

Cases to follow soon thereafter, and the Camp Fire Investigation proceeding apace. The Litigation 

Group’s involvement in these Chapter 11 Cases, the Estimation Proceedings, the Tubbs Action, the 

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CPUC OII, and the Camp Fire Investigation is wide-ranging and includes, among other tasks: (a) 

coordinating and overseeing the significant discovery that is currently ongoing in each of these 

proceedings, including large-scale production of documents and regularly occurring depositions; 

(b) assisting the Debtors in preparing for hearings and trials; and (c) overseeing and reviewing 

multiple lengthy and complex documents for filing. 

17. In the Tubbs Action, there are 22 fact depositions scheduled to take place within the 

next 29 days, with an additional 50 fact depositions to be scheduled within that same time frame, 

and there is an unknown number of expert depositions that must be scheduled within the next 35 

days. In the Estimation Proceedings, the Debtors have produced approximately 3.3 million 

documents to date, the parties are expected to file at least 48 expert reports and take at least 73 

depositions, and the hearing is set to estimate the Debtors’ liability for at least 23 separate wildfires. 

18. The Litigation Group is also devoting significant resources to addressing legal issues 

arising from and related to the 2019 wildfire season, including regarding the Kincade Fire and PSPS. 

19. As but one specific example of the many conflicts that would arise if the Tiger Action 

were permitted to proceed, the attorney in the Litigation Group who is and has been primarily 

responsible for the Tiger Action since December 2016—Shari Hollis-Ross, Senior Counsel—is the 

Litigation Group attorney overseeing the Debtors’ claims process in these Chapter 11 Cases. 

20. The IT and Customer Care Departments are also currently handling numerous tasks 

in addition to their ordinary day-to-day responsibilities. Specifically, the IT Department is involved 

in the collection of information in connection with the ongoing and expedited discovery occurring 

in these Chapter 11 Cases, the discovery occurring in the Estimation Proceedings, and the discovery 

occurring in the Tubbs Action. Moreover, the IT Department is addressing various ongoing 

technical issues relating to PSPS efforts, which, again, are crucial to public safety and the Debtors’ 

ability to achieve a successful reorganization. The Customer Care Department is responsible for all 

customer communication issues relating to PSPS and the Utility’s efforts to support customers 

following the Kincade Fire. For example, numerous employees from the Customer Care group who 

are key to the Tiger Action, including, among others, Matthew Workman (Manager, Complex 

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