PG&E’s new $10 million media campaign features Tony Earley, PG&E’s CEO, saying that in recent years, PG&E had "lost its way." (Cue the music and the video of cute little kids.)

That, I suppose, is what passes among PG&E’s top management as an apology.

Seems that Earley forgot to run his sound bite by PG&E’s lawyers.  After all, it’s the lawyers who run the show at PG&E and they seem to disagree with this "we lost our way" nonsense.

According to Jaxon Van Derbeken at the Chronicle, at this week’s hearings, CPUC staff accused that

PG&E’s pipeline integrity management program, record keeping and emergency response the night of the blast violated the law. In particular, the PG&E Lawyer Joseph Malkincompany was accused by regulators of failing to test the San Bruno line in recent years even after it twice boosted gas pressures above legal levels."

In response, rather than repeating Earley’s "we lost our way" mantra, PG&E’s lawyer denied everything.  The lawyer, Joseph Malkin (pictured) claimed that PG&E’s practice of spiking the pressure in its gas lines was legal, that it posed no danger to the pipeline and that it had nothing to do with the blast.

According to Van Derbeken, PG&E’s lawyer said that

PG&E’s only responsibility in the blast was unwittingly installing and operating a defective pipe [in 1956]."  

Far cry from Earley’s "we lost our way" stuff.