Hawaii high court grapples with $222M taken from Maui wildfire settlement

Three years after the Lahaina fires killed 102 people and destroyed more than 2,000 structures, the legal fight has shifted from the ash to a Honolulu courtroom, where four attorneys are asking the Hawaii Supreme Court to undo a $222 million Common Benefit Fund carved out of the $4 billion settlement. The fund caps what individual attorneys can charge clients at 8% or 3%, well under the 25% state law otherwise allows, and the challengers say the circuit court had no authority to create it once the underlying cases were dismissed.

State attorney Michael Lam countered that a single coordinated process was needed to avoid chaos across thousands of claims, while plaintiffs' attorney Cynthia Wong noted the settlement covers only a fraction of the $12 to $15 billion in claimed damages. Another attorney floated redistributing excess fees back to claimants, prompting a justice to ask how that differs from the fund already in place. A lawyer for the challengers warned the ruling could ripple to California, where Southern California Edison is reportedly watching the case closely.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.