Honolulu – When the governor of Hawaii, Josh Green, announced an agreement of $ 4 billion approximately one year after the most fatal American forest fire in a devastated Lahaina century in 2023, promoted the speed of the agreement to “avoid prolonged and painful demands” .
Five months later, however, an unusual judgment as of Wednesday will deepen difficult questions about the losses of the survivors, since a judge decides how to divide the agreement. Some victims will take the position of the witnesses, while others have presented pre -recorded testimony, describing the pain even cooler due to the recent destruction in Los Angeles.
The test will not determine the fault. The defendants blamed the fire, including the State, the Energy Company, Hawaiian Electric and the great owners have already accepted the amount of the agreement.
The issue is how much money several groups of plaintiffs could receive, including some who filed individual demands after losing their relatives, homes or businesses, and other victims covered by class action demands, including tourists who simply had to cancel trips to Maui after Maui after hell.
The lawyers of the two groups did not reach an agreement, letting Judge Peter Cahill determine how the $ 4 billion should be shared.
“A collective claim is that everyone suffers the same loss,” said Damon Valverde, whose Lahaina sunglasses company burned. “And I suffered much more than others, and others suffered much more than me.”
Valverde is not expected to testify; The approach should be in the victims who lost family members, he said.
Those include Kevin Bacll, whose wife, father -in -law, mother -in -law and brother -in -law were among the 102 people who know they died.
Baclig said in a statement that if he was called to testify, he would describe how for three agonizing days he searched them, from the hotel to the hotel, the shelter and the shelter. “I clung to the fragile hope that they may have left the island, that they were safe,” he said.
A month and a half passed and the gloomy reality was established. He went to the Philippines to gather DNA samples from his wife’s close relatives there. The samples coincide with permanence that are found in the fire. Finally he brought urns retaining his remains to the Philippines.
“Loss has left me in a deep and implacable pain,” he said. “There are no words to describe the emptiness I feel or the weight that I have every day.”
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 to that group, said Jacob Lowenthal, one of the lawyers who represent the victims, such as Bacll, who have filed their own demands, known as the “individual plaintiffs.”
“The losses categories that the class states are simply insignificant compared to our losses,” Lowenthal said.
The lawyers representing the class did not respond to Associated Press’s messages. In their trial report, they challenged the idea that all those who have a claim that is worth demanding have already done so. Many people have delayed the hiring of lawyers, according to the report, due to the interruption of the fire to life, “distrust in the advertising of heavy lawyers and a desire to see how the first process develops.”
More complicating the matter are questions before the State Supreme Court, which is considering whether insurers can sue the defendants separately for their reimbursement for the $ 2 billion they have paid as a result of the fire, or if their action It must come from the $ 4 billion of liquidation.
If the Court says that insurers can sue separately, that will probably tell the entire agreement. Reparing that insurers pursue the defendants, it is a key term of liquidation, and allowing them to do so would drain the money available for fire victims and lead to prolonged litigation, the lawyers of the individual plaintiffs say.
