Civil lawsuits could be filed after the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office released the findings of its investigation into the causes of the Marshall fire, Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty said Thursday.

The investigation found two causes of the destructive and deadly fire in December of 2021. One linked to a fire at property owned by Twelve Tribes that was left to smolder six days earlier. The second cause sparked at around noon by an unmoored Xcel Energy power line near the Marshall Mesa Trailhead, Sheriff Curtis Johnson said.

Xcel officials denied responsibility and disagreed with investigators’ findings on the power lines.

Kirk McGill is a Denver attorney with Hall Estill who specializes in litigation and regulatory matters around the state of Colorado.

“Any time an injury has two or more independent causes, the complexity of the legal issues increases substantially,” McGill said in a statement. “Here, the investigation found that the Twelve Tribes acted reasonably to cover up a fire on their property by converting it with dirt, and that they could not have predicted that the wind would blow the dirt off the fire six days later. Thus, Twelve Tribes will likely argue that they have no liability because they acted reasonably in covering the earlier fire with dirt.”

He addressed the Xcel issue, too.

“The investigation also found that an Xcel powerline had become unmoored and caused a second fire, but there is no evidence that it was negligently installed or maintained,” he said. “Thus, Xcel will also likely argue that it acted reasonably and that the powerline becoming unmoored was due to the same high winds that blew the dirt off the Twelve Tribes fire, not any negligence on Xcel’s part.

“I would expect there to be civil lawsuits filed against both Twelve Tribes and Xcel simply due to the sheer amount of damage caused by the fire. Insurance companies in particular have every reason to file suits because the cost of doing so is almost certainly significantly less than the cost they paid out in insurance claims.”

McGill added that unless new information was uncovered during the civil suit process, “it is quite possible that neither Xcel nor Twelve Tribes would be found legally at fault.”

“In short, the results of the investigation from the perspective of placing legal blame purport to clear both Xcel and the Twelve Tribes of legal liability,” McGill said. “But given the magnitude of the damage caused by the fire, there’s likely to be a lot of lawyering over the next several years before we will find out whether the legal system will confirm or reject the conclusions of the investigation.”