LIHU‘E — Sometimes it takes a document a long time to travel down a flight of stairs. The Garden Island Thursday confirmed that 5th Circuit Judge Kathleen Watanabe this week signed an order allowing unsealing of the state’s monetary portion
LIHU‘E — Sometimes it takes a document a long time to travel down a flight of stairs.
The Garden Island Thursday confirmed that 5th Circuit Judge Kathleen Watanabe this week signed an order allowing unsealing of the state’s monetary portion of settlements reached in various wrongful-death and property-damage civil cases involving the failure of Ka Loko Reservoir in March 2006.
But as of Thursday morning, that order had not made it down from Watanabe’s second-floor chambers to the first-floor records clerks.
Once the order is filed and docketed, and a state Judiciary worker physically unseals the appropriate portions of the settlement documents (specifically the State of Hawai‘i appendix which contains the state’s settlement amounts), the state amounts can and will be made public, a Lihu‘e state courthouse clerk said Thursday morning.
She did not know how long it would take for all of that to happen, but the case files Thursday were still in Watanabe’s chambers.
Lisa Ginoza, state first deputy attorney general, was unaware Watanabe had already signed the order, and acknowledged she received The Garden Island’s written request for the state settlement documents once they have been unsealed by Watanabe’s order.
The failure of the reservoir near Kilauea during a period of 40 days of consecutive rain sent millions of gallons of water rushing across Kuhio Highway, creating a river that washed away several homes and killed seven people.
The state and County of Kaua‘i are among the defendants in the civil cases filed by property owners including Bruce Fehring and Bette Midler. Land owner and retired Honolulu car dealer James “Jimmy” Pflueger is also a defendant.
Watanabe said in court Tuesday that settlement portions of the non-governmental defendants, including Pflueger, would not be unsealed.
The state settlement amounts likely will be funded by an act of the state Legislature, probably early in the 2010 session that begins in mid-January. A similar public passage of funding legislation will probably be required by the Kaua‘i County Council for the county’s portion as well.
County Attorney Al Castillo on Tuesday and Thursday did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
• Paul C. Curtis, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or pcurtis@kauaipubco.com.
