If you are trying to cut California's wildfire risk, increasing legal liability of its electric utility is about the dumbest place to put your leverage that anyone could imagine. California could turn its power grid off entirely and only make a small dent in overall fire risk over time. All that dry brush has to go away somehow, and nature has historically done it with fires (no PG&E necessary).
Despite massive wealth, the California government's slide into 3rd-world standards has been pretty fast.
No, I'm afraid that you can't materially reduce the fires by preventing some (small) number of ignitions. The problem is the dry brush buildup. Something will spark it eventually.
Having someone to blame is fun politics, but it's not going to get California out of the mess. It's not even a fire management problem. California covers a region of the world that has been having decades or centuries-long drought phases for millennia. The last few decades were built up during the good times. It's getting dryer now, and there will be more fires throughout this dry phase, however many years or decades it lasts.
I didn't say you could materially reduce fires, only the ones caused by PG&Es negligence. There will still be fires, but maybe they won't be caused-in-fact by lack of reasonable maintenance of power lines.
Despite massive wealth, the California government's slide into 3rd-world standards has been pretty fast.