A milestone in the long and troubled history of the Hawaiian Home Lands Trust has been reached.

The final settlement in Kalima v. State of Hawaii — a $328 million victory for Native Hawaiians seeking homesteads — concluded on Friday, when a state Circuit Court judge approved the settlement and associated legal fees.

But the repercussions and lessons learned will reverberate. The case demonstrates that the persistent and sometimes calculated failure of the state and the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) to provide homesteads in a timely fashion cannot be tolerated. The price paid is too great.

Kalima v. State spanned nearly 24 years, and the costs have been enormous. The class-action lawsuit, filed in 1999, started with a plaintiff class of about 2,700 Native Hawaiians seeking the homestead lots to which they were entitled. As of Friday, 1,164 had died waiting. The futures and fortunes of all the plaintiffs, living and dead, have been forever altered.

“Lives and families were literally destroyed by the failure of the trustee to fulfill its obligations to provide homesteads to our Native people,” said Tom Grande, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs.

Kalima v. State did not need to happen.

Thirty-two years ago, the state Legislature enacted a law that created an administrative process to adjudicate claims for homesteads that were filed by Aug. 31, 1995, over harm suffered between 1959 and 1988. The class of 2,700 met that deadline, but legislators didn’t meet theirs.

The 1999 deadline for lawmakers to approve adjudicated claims passed, and the lawsuit was the result.

The stubborn unwillingness of the state to resolve an obvious injustice — played out in two trials and two decisions appealed by the state to the Hawaii Supreme Court — has resulted in the biggest known legal settlement in Hawaii history, with Hawaii taxpayers footing the bill.

Included in the $328 million settlement is $40 million for the legal team representing the plaintiffs — another record. With $2 million for claims administration costs, plaintiffs will divide up about $286 million.

Proceeds for each class member will vary by their length of time waiting for a homestead, the type of land lease for which they applied and how their application was treated, among other things.

As for the legal fees: $40 million represents the maximum amount allowed under the negotiated settlement with the Legislature in 2022. It represents 12.19% of the total settlement, far less than the 33.3% the plaintiffs agreed to in signed contracts. The state argued the number should be no more than the allowed minimum of $28 million.

But many of the plaintiffs said the legal fees were justified.

“To this day they are still working for us,” said Diane Boner, one of the plaintiffs, defending the $40 million payout. “They didn’t give up.”

But while the Kalima case may be over, the work isn’t. There are more than 28,000 beneficiaries still on DHHL’s waitlist. Many have been waiting for years. Qualified applicants must be at least 50% Hawaiian and can receive house, farm or pastoral lots under 99-year leases that cost $1 a year.

Fortunately, real progress is on the horizon. Thanks to a $600 million allocation from the Legislature last year, DHHL has been aggressively pursuing projects to spend the money by a June 2025 deadline.

This month, DHHL broke ground on the second stage of a master-planned community in Kapolei called Kauluokahai, with 127 single-family residential lots on 23.9 acres. Kauluokahai will eventually cover 404 acres with about 1,000 single-family house lots.

Out of necessity, DHHL’s strategy has broadened, including development of a high-rise rental complex at the former Stadium Bowl-O-Drome in Moiliili, and rent-with-option-to-purchase housing on Hawaii island.

DHHL also may be able to capitalize on Gov. Josh Green’s July 17 emergency proclamation to increase the production of housing by streamlining the process for getting government approvals and permits.

Clearing a 28,000-beneficiary waitlist remains a daunting challenge. But after Kalima v. State, one thing should be clear: There’s no more time to waste.