The deaths of three people and injuries sustained by others in eight separate incidents are expected to cost the state $6.7 million this year.
The state Department of the Attorney General is seeking the sum to pay settlements in the eight personal injury cases as part of a larger request to the Legislature to pay 23 claims against the state.
In total, the claims amount to $336 million and include one for $328 million to settle a 23-year-old lawsuit in which roughly 2,700 state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands beneficiaries are to be compensated for not receiving homestead land leases in a timely manner.
This year’s settlement involving DHHL resulted in the claim payout, which is extraordinarily large compared with annual claims over the past decade ranging from $1.1 million in 2020 to $28.3 million in 2013.
Of the eight personal injury claims this year, the largest is for $4 million to settle a 2017 federal lawsuit filed by a woman who said a deputy sheriff sexually assaulted her while she was in custody. A jury ruled against the state in 2021 after a trial and awarded the plaintiff
$7 million, but the state asked for a new trial on appeal.
Three claims against the state Department of Public Safety involve inmate deaths.
The biggest is a $1.375 million judgement awarded by a state judge earlier this year for a 2017 incident in which a man hanged himself at Halawa Correctional Facility while in solitary confinement, despite being on suicide watch.
In another case, the state agreed to pay $550,000 to settle a 2019 lawsuit that claimed the state bore responsibility for the death of a woman who took her own life while incarcerated at Maui Community Correctional Center in 2017 after a corrections officer dismissed a suggestion that she be put on suicide watch.
The other deadly incident involved a man with epilepsy who was released from Oahu Community Correctional Center in 2016 at night with no money, identification or medication while wearing disposable clothing. He was found dead eight days later in an abandoned vehicle. His cause of death was disputed between a seizure due to lack of medication and heart disease as officially recorded.
The case was settled in mediation for $150,000.
“It was a very unfortunate, unusual mix-up,” Caron Inagaki, a deputy attorney general, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in February.
Inagaki explained that prison officials released the man in the manner they did because they mistakenly thought his release date was the next day and wanted to avoid detaining him for
longer than permitted.
Inagaki told the committee that DPS has been advised of suggested corrective action so that no such thing happens in the future.
Six of the eight claims involving personal injury or death pertained to the state’s corrections system and were settled for a combined $6.4 million.
“These claims resulted from egregious incidents that the state should ensure are not repeated,” a joint House-Senate conference committee said in a report filed Thursday after approving a final version of Senate Bill 3041, which allocates funding for all claims to be paid this year.
“Your committee expects the Department of the Attorney General to provide thorough corrective guidance and oversight to the Department of Public Safety to eliminate or mitigate the factors that contributed to the state’s negligence.”
In one other case, a prisoner who was sleeping in his cell at OCCC was beaten by a group of inmates who walked through unlocked gates that should have been locked. The case was settled for $40,000.
Another involved a federal 2021 class-action lawsuit that alleged conditions of confinement at the state’s correctional facilities put inmates at risk for contracting the coronavirus. A $250,540 settlement to be paid by the state covered attorneys’ fees. A settlement resolving the complaint produced an expert panel to improve coronavirus safety conditions.
Two personal injury cases involved other state departments.
One pertained to the emotional distress of a public school student and parent in a case settled for $150,000.
The other case pertained to the state’s share of fault for a tree that fell and injured two people in a yurt at Malaekahana State Recreation Area in 2014, more than two years after the private manager of the camping area, owned by the state, expressed concern to the Department of Land and Natural Resources about tree conditions.
The management firm’s insurance company paid a $1 million settlement, and the insurance company pursued the state as being jointly responsible for the trees. To settle the case, the state agreed to cover $225,000 of the settlement.
“If the case had gone to trial, the trial court could have assessed a much higher percentage of fault to the state, resulting in a much higher payout,” the Department of the Attorney General said in written testimony to the Legislature.
Claims against the state also included incidents
of accidental property
damage, violation of environmental regulations, wrongful termination of a state employee and nearly $400,000 to reissue state checks to payees who lost, misplaced or never received checks that went uncashed.
The smallest of the checks was for $40.65. The largest was for $383,119.65 and is owed to Princeville Hotel LP.
Inagaki told the Judiciary Committee it’s not unusual for companies to overlook things like tax refund checks until reviewing their files.
“We’ve seen this a lot,” she said. “There are a lot of corporations where that is not a lot to them and so it does fall through the cracks.”
SB 3041 would appropriate mainly state general funds to pay claims.
The bill was approved Tuesday by a joint House-
Senate conference committee and is expected to be
approved this week in House and Senate floor votes.
