Good point. I was only looking at it from an engineering point of view, not legal. Although the strict liability doctrine is common for environmental offenses b

Good point. I was only looking at it from an engineering point of view, not legal. Although the strict liability doctrine is common for environmental offenses because it makes prosecution a lot easier * , it might not make sense to bankrupt PG&E for something they couldn't have actually prevented while still fulfilling their service mandate. * Imagine a company spills 50,000 litres of oil into a river. You don't have to prove what happened or anyone's motivation for doing it, just that the oil was in the river and it came from their facility.