Hawaii high court grapples with $222M taken from Maui wildfire settlement
The Maui judge who approved a $4 billion settlement for wildfire victims also set aside $222 million for attorneys who worked on the sprawling lawsuit.
by Jeremy Yurow, Court House News, September 15, 2026
HONOLULU (CN) — Three years after wildfires tore through Lahaina, the fight over the billions set aside for its survivors has moved off Maui’s scorched hillsides to a downtown Honolulu courtroom.
Four attorneys — Michael Bates, Anthony Ranken, Alex Edrenkin and John Thickstun — asked the Hawaii Supreme Court Tuesday to undo a judge’s order carving $222 million out of a $4 billion Maui wildfire settlement to pay a group of attorneys.
The Common Benefit Fund is meant to go to attorneys whose work benefited all of the roughly 21,750 plaintiffs seeking a share of the settlement. The fund sets up a tiered schedule for attorneys’ fees, but also caps what they can charge clients at 8% or 3%, down from the 25% Hawaii law otherwise allows.
“We are not here to seek a higher fee,” Samuel Shnider, representing the four attorneys, said. “The purpose of this appeal is, again, to address the issues of due process, of equal protection, to protect the integrity of settlements and access to justice in the next disaster.”
Justice Todd Eddins pressed Shnider on whether the court was truly overstepping its authority or simply using its equitable power to manage the special proceeding it had created.
Shnider argued that the circuit court had no authority to create the fund once the underlying cases were settled and dismissed. He also said the process shut his clients out of the process.
Acting Chief Justice Sabrina McKenna asked what would happen if the fee order were overturned. Shnider said attorneys and clients would return to their original contingency-fee agreements and negotiate fees directly.
Michael Lam, representing Hawaii, said the circuit court needed to resolve fees in one coordinated process across thousands of claims.
“The result, if it was not a collaborative, integrated ruling, would have created chaos,” he said.
Cynthia Wong, representing a group of plaintiffs, said the $4 billion settlement covered only a fraction of the $12 billion to $15 billion in damages the victims had claimed, and that subrogation attorneys, class attorneys and individual plaintiff attorneys would all take a cut.
“Nobody, not one liaison counsel, and nobody from the steering committee, sought a common benefit fee,” Wong said. “The court granted it and ordered it as part of its inherent powers, with full discretion to do what it did.”
Another group of plaintiffs, represented by attorney Lance Collins, agreed the circuit court had authority over attorney fees but proposed a different way to distribute the money.
“The proposal is that everybody would be compensated at the tier that they were picked at, and then the excess would be returned to the settlement fund to be distributed to claimants without further attorneys’ fees being assessed,” Collins said.
Justice Lisa Ginoza questioned how that proposal differed in practice from the common-benefit fund already ordered.
Shnider warned the ruling could reach beyond Maui, pointing to a California case.
“Southern California Edison, the utility company that started the Eden Fire that destroyed Altadena in California, is hoping and imagining that this court will uphold the fee order,” he said. “This fee order is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and it’s harmful for the people of Hawaii.”
The justices did not indicate when they would rule.
The Hawaii settlement stems from the Aug. 8, 2023, fires that tore through Maui, including the historic town of Lahaina on the island’s west side. The blaze destroyed more than 2,000 structures and killed 102 people. Thousands were displaced, and much of the town was left in ruins.
It was the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in more than a century, and the worst natural disaster in Hawaii’s history.
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