Berkshire’s PacifiCorp Risks Junk Label as Wildfire Costs Mount

A Berkshire Hathaway Energy Co.-owned utility is at risk of losing its investment-grade credit rating as it expects to have to pay up more money for litigation brought by victims of 2020 wildfires in Oregon.

PacifiCorp recently warned that it might need to borrow more money to cover legal judgments. The utility faces a quicker pace of “mini-trials” designed to assess how much it’ll have to pay over its role in the Labor Day wildfires, which burned more than 1 million acres and destroyed thousands of homes.

The utility, which is the largest grid operator in the Western US, ...