A last-minute deal reached between lawyers representing victims of a deadly Hawaii wildfire has averted the need for a trial to determine how to split a $4bn settlement.
The unusual trial had been expected to delve into difficult questions about survivors’ losses. Some victims were ready to take the witness stand, while others submitted pre-recorded testimony, describing pain made all the more fresh by the recent destruction in Los Angeles.
But soon after the trial began on Wednesday morning, lawyers met in private with the judge, who later announced in court that a deal had been reached.
Lawyers are not expected to immediately file documents detailing the agreement.
Hawaii governor Josh Green announced the $4 bn settlement about a year after the deadliest US wildfire in a century devastated Lahaina in 2023. At the time, he touted the speed of the deal to “avoid protracted and painful lawsuits”.
Defendants blamed for the blaze, including the state, power utility Hawaiian Electric and large landowners, had already agreed to the settlement amount.
The trial had been planned to determine how much money various groups of plaintiffs might receive, including some who filed individual lawsuits after losing their relatives, homes or businesses, and other victims covered by class-action lawsuits, including tourists who simply had to cancel trips to Maui following the inferno.
Kevin Baclig had been expected to testify. His wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law and brother-in-law were among the 102 people known to have died.
Baclig said in a declaration that if called to testify he would describe how for three agonizing days he searched for them – from hotel to hotel, shelter to shelter.
“I clung to the fragile hope that maybe they had made it off the island, that they were safe,” he said.
A month and a half went by and the grim reality set in. He went to the Philippines to gather DNA samples from his wife’s close relatives there. The samples matched remains found in the fire. He eventually carried urns holding their remains back to the Philippines.
“The loss has left me in profound, unrelenting pain,” he said. “There are no words to describe the emptiness I feel or the weight I carry every day.”
The class action includes some people who lost homes and businesses, but also tourists whose trips were delayed or canceled. Only a nominal portion of the settlement should go toward that group, said Jacob Lowenthal, one of the attorneys representing victims – such as Baclig – who have filed their own lawsuits, known as the “individual plaintiffs”.
“The categories of losses that the class is claiming are just grossly insignificant compared to our losses,” Lowenthal said.
In their trial brief, attorneys representing the class challenged the idea that everyone who has a claim worth suing over had already done so. Many people held off hiring attorneys, the brief said, because of the fire’s disruption to life, “distrust in heavy attorney advertising, and a desire to see how the process plays out first”.
Further complicating the matter were questions before the state supreme court, which was considering whether insurers can separately sue the defendants for reimbursement for the $2 bn-plus they have paid out as a result of the fire, or whether their share must come from the $4 bn settlement.