LIHU‘E — A state judge on Tuesday granted a motion that will publicly disclose the amount the county has agreed to pay in the settlement for the civil cases of wrongful death and property damage surrounding the Ka Loko Reservoir
LIHU‘E — A state judge on Tuesday granted a motion that will publicly disclose the amount the county has agreed to pay in the settlement for the civil cases of wrongful death and property damage surrounding the Ka Loko Reservoir failure nearly four years ago.
The written order must now be approved by all parties and signed by 5th Circuit Judge Kathleen Watanabe. This is expected to take approximately two weeks, a county news release states.
When the written order is approved and signed, the county will release the settlement and the county’s appendix, which provides the amount the county has agreed to pay, the release says.
Ronald Michioka, an O‘ahu attorney and special counsel for the county, said he can begin circulating the order for requisite signatures as early as today, but it could take up to three weeks to get signatures from the various parties.
“We need to expedite this in order to comply with the order,” he said.
In a similar state document, there are 77 signatures of releasees (plaintiffs), including Bruce Fehring and Cynthia Fehring several times, other representatives of the victims’ families, Bette Midler and others, and 20 signatures of releasors (defendants), including James Pflueger several times (individually and in his capacities as a former Mary Lucas Estate trustee and head of various Pflueger companies and entities), various C. Brewer entities, the county and state.
Watanabe said in court Tuesday that there were no objections to unsealing the county’s portion of the settlement.
Michioka, who attended by phone, said the county waited to file a motion to unseal its share of the settlement due to a wish to wait for a written opinion from the state Office of Information Practices on whether the county settlement amount should be unsealed per the state’s open-meetings and open-information act, known as the Sunshine Law.
He still had not received a written opinion by Tuesday, but had received a verbal OIP opinion that the county should unseal its share of the settlement, Michioka said.
Watanabe ruled earlier that the individual settlement amounts paid by the non-governmental defendants would remain confidential.
The Garden Island was one of several media outlets filing formal written requests with the state and county for release of the state and county’s share of the settlement in several civil suits involving Pflueger and other defendants, relating to the seven deaths and millions of dollars in property damage March 14, 2006, when the earthen Ka Loko Reservoir failed and sent hundreds of millions of gallons of water careening toward the ocean near Kilauea.
The state’s share, $1.5 million, will need to be funded by the state Legislature this session.
Accounting for a difference in the state and county amounts, Michioka said a private insurance company will pay a large amount of the county’s share while the self-insured state must pay its entire share from taxpayer money.
