Here is the opinion in Kalima v. State of Hawai’i.
From the Honolulu Advertiser:
State First Circuit Judge Eden Elizabeth Hifo ruled the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands is required to place Native Hawaiians on lands set aside for them by the federal government in a prompt and efficient manner. Hifo’s decision means the state could owe unspecified millions in damages to more than 2,700 Hawaiians who have been waiting for land.
“I’m very happy that it’s come to this point after waiting and waiting and waiting and being broken-hearted so many times,” said Wehilani Ching, who first applied for a Hawaiian Home Lands lease 47 years ago.
About 19,000 people with 50 percent or more Hawaiian blood are waiting to be placed on homesteads, which were promised to them as part of the Hawaiian Homes Act of 1920 passed by the U.S. Congress. When Hawaii became a state in 1959, it took over the obligation of distributing the land.
“The court concluded people should have been placed on the land quicker than they were,” said Thomas Grande, one of the attorneys who brought the class-action lawsuit 10 years ago.
“The court found that some (plaintiffs) waited 25 years or more to be awarded a homestead and that a reasonable time to get a homestead would only be several years.”
The 2,700 Native Hawaiians represented in the class action are those who went before a state-appointed review panel created in 1991 to resolve the claims for the period between Aug. 21, 1959, and June 30, 1988. That panel ran out of money before nearly all the claims were dealt with. The Kalima v. DHHL lawsuit was filed in 1999 but was stalled until the Hawai’i Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the beneficiaries had standing to sue.
In her ruling, Hifo pointed to several specific examples of the breach of trust:
• The state failed to return 29,000 acres of land that had been taken out of the trust for government entities and private individuals.
• DHHL failed to maintain financial records for a number of years, making it impossible for the agency to issue bonds as a means of financing housing projects until the mid-1980s.
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