Legal heavyweights to face off over Summit Fire blame

Santa Clara County prosecutors are opposing a bid by the Public Defender’s Office to have a local contractor declared factually innocent of negligently causing the big 2008 Summit Fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Both sides are bringing considerable legal firepower to a hearing set for late November.

Javier Rios is the veteran from the Public Defender’s Office, who has taken the extremely rare step of asking Superior Court Judge Maureen Williams to declare contractor Channing Verden factually innocent based on a series of politically explosive allegations that Cal Fire denies, including that its fire investigation was scientifically flawed and its lead investigator, Josh White, utterly untrustworthy.

If the request is granted, the case would be wiped off Verden’s record as if it never existed.

The DA’s Office has assigned two heavyweights — prosecutors David Boyd and Catherine ( Kitty) Pozos.

Boyd was the prosecutor who filed criminal charges against Verden, contending that sparks from large piles of brush he recklessly left to smolder ignited nearby vegetation more than a month later, destroying 35 of his neighbors’ homes and charring 4,280 acres in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties.

The prosecution’s negligence case eventually foundered after a Cal Fire captain in 2009 failed to properly douse a burn pile, sparking the Loma Fire, which destroyed two mobile homes, burned 485 acres in Santa Cruz County and cost about $ 4 million to fight, compared with $ 14.85 million for the Summit Fire.

But the DA’s Office never lost faith in its case, which it has said in the past was based on the conclusions of other arson investigators, not just White. The defense makes several claims, including that Verden took every reasonable precaution to ensure his burn did not escape, including creating a 100- foot break between his piles and nearby vegetation.