2021 Trial Lawyer of the Year Winner: Kalima v. State of Hawai‘i

This historic breach-of-trust class action lawsuit, tracing back to this country’s colonization of Hawai’i in the early 1890s, vindicates the generations of Native Hawaiians who are not recognized as Indigenous people by the government, and without a sovereign land base, are denied most of the social, educational, and health benefits provided to other Indigenous peoples living in the U.S.

In 1921, Congress established the 203,000-acre Hawaiian Home Lands Trust to “rehabilitate” and provide residential, agricultural, and pastoral homestead lots to those of 50 percent or more Native Hawaiian blood. While most of the land was in inaccessible locations and infertile, it provided the only means to give Hawaiians a land-based stake of their own.

Currently, the state has nearly 10,000 beneficiaries on Hawaiian homestead lands with another 27,000 more on the “waitlist.” However, for over 60 years, the state of Hawai’i violated its fiduciary duty by withdrawing thousands of acres from the trust, leasing the lands to private companies, using trust lands for state facilities, and most egregiously, losing thousands of pages of beneficiary application files. Thousands of Native Hawaiians have died waiting for a homestead award, an injustice that echoes across generations.

This case—beginning in December of 1999 and spanning generations—addresses the state government’s unchecked abuse of power and breaches of trust. The plaintiffs—the majority over the age of 75—had been waiting for their homesteads, during which many spent decades either homeless, some families living on the beach, in poverty, or living with family members.

The legal team filed the lawsuit against the State of Hawai’i on behalf of all the beneficiaries who had filed claims with the Hawaiian Claims Panel between 1991 and 1995—an effort that now spans over 20 years, involving two trials and two appeals.

Because of the individualized nature of the breach of trust claims, the legal team sequenced class certifications to resolve as much of the case as possible on a class-wide basis, before resolving individualized damages claims. Instead of 2,700 individual trials, the team devised a novel method of damage computation by calculating average fair market rental value for the 1960 to present class damage period.

Finally, in June of 2020, the Hawai’i Supreme Court ruled that the state had breached its trust duty to Native Hawaiian beneficiaries of the Hawaiian Home Lands Trust program by not awarding homestead lots in a timely manner. In a unanimous opinion, the Court rejected arguments that the state had made for two decades in its attempt to avoid paying for delays in homestead awards. At last, the 2,700 elderly class members now can claim compensation from the state of Hawai’i for being denied the homesteads guaranteed to them.

Team: Thomas Grande of Grande Law Offices; Waimānalo, Hawai’I; Vivien Akiyama Lopez of Grande Law Offices; Waimānalo, Hawai’i and Carl M. Varady of Law Office of Carl M. Varady in Honolulu, Hawai’i