The Inquest

After three weeks of testimony in front of the jury, Mulholland and the city are held harmless from criminal liability. While errors in judgement and oversight were called out, the jury did not recommend prosecution of Mulholland or city officials. Their recording findings and recommendations:

"The responsibility for the error in engineering judgment rests upon the Bureau of Water Works and Supply and the Chief Engineer thereof.

The responsibility for the error in public policy belongs to those to whom the Chief Engineer is subservient, including the Department of Water and Power Commissioners, the legislative bodies of city and state, and to the public at large. It is a logical result of a set of conditions that the citizenship has allowed to develop and continue. This is the more fundamental error, for if proper safeguards had been provided in the city charter and in the state laws, making it impossible for excessive responsibility to be delegated to or assumed by any one individual in matters involving great menaces to public safety, it is unlikely that the engineering error would have escaped detection and produced a great disaster.

A sound policy of public safety and business and engineering judgment demands that the construction and operation of a great dam should never be left to the sole judgment of one man, no matter how eminent, without check by independent expert authority, for no one is free from error, and checking by independent experts will eliminate the effect of human error and insure safety.

The exemption of municipalities from supervision by state authorities in the building of dams involving public hazards is a very serious defect of the state law that should be corrected.

[...] We, the Jury, find no evidence of criminal act or intent on the part of the Board of Water Works and Supply of the City of Los Angeles, or any engineer or employee in the construction or operation of the St. Francis Dam, and we recommend that there be no criminal prosecution of any of the above by the District Attorney."

Mulholland expressed great empathy, sympathy and responsibility for the disaster and it ruined him in the years that followed until his death.