At least 90 lawsuits related to the Maui wildfires against Hawaiian Electric Industries, Spectrum, Kamehameha Schools and other defendants will be sent back to Maui state court, where they were originally filed, a federal judge ruled Monday.

In remanding the cases, U.S. District Judge Jill Otake rejected an argument by HECO’s lawyer that the town of Lahaina, where most of the 101 deaths occurred — in structures, vehicles, outdoors and in the ocean — was a single “discrete location” under a federal law concerning mass disasters.

Because Lahaina and the disparate places where people died were not a “discrete location,” Otake wrote, the federal law did not apply and the federal court did not have jurisdiction over the cases. 

In summing up her reasoning, Otake’s 30-page order stated simply, “it is undisputed that the deaths here occurred across the entirety of Lahaina, and the Court concludes that Lahaina is not a ‘discrete location.’”

Plaintiffs’ lawyer Jesse Creed called the ruling “a huge victory” and said, “Now these cases will be decided by a Maui jury.”

“That’s important because the jury’s the conscience of the community,” he added.

Creed previously accused HECO of using the removal of the cases from Maui to federal court as a procedural stalling tactic. With the cases now back before Maui Judge Peter Cahill, Creed said, the plaintiffs can resume the work of seeking justice for victims. 

“We just missed about four months of work we could have done to get justice for these victims, and we fully intend to make up for that lost time,” he said.

HECO’s attorney, California lawyer Brad Brian, declined an interview request.

The definition of “discrete location” was central to the question of which court would hear the cases. Injury, property damage and wrongful death cases normally fall under the jurisdiction of state courts, with some exceptions. But the federal Multiparty, Multiforum Trial Jurisdiction Act, passed by Congress in 2002, allows federal courts to hear cases arising out of a “single accident, where at least 75 natural persons have died in the accident at a discrete location” as long as some other criteria are met.

The challenge for Otake was that Congress didn’t define “discrete location.” So it was up to the judge to fill in the blanks, relying on the plain language of the statute, tools of statutory interpretation and cases from other places. A deadly fire that destroyed a nightclub in Rhode Island in 2003, for instance, was found to have been a “discrete location.” In another case, a court found the New Orleans metro area was not a discrete location.

Otake found the New Orleans case analogous. “Just like the entirety of New Orleans was not a ‘discrete location,’ neither is the entirety of Lahaina,” she wrote.

“There were approximately 42 people recovered from inside structures, 39 from outdoor locations, 15 from inside vehicles, and one in the water,” the judge wrote. “An additional three deaths were later reported to have occurred in hospital on Oahu due to fire related injuries.” 

Otake included in her order a map showing that the locations of the fatalities were spread across Lahaina’s seven square miles. 

“The map makes clear the Lahaina Fire impacted miles of land, destroying various structures including homes, hotels, and businesses, crossing major thoroughfares in its path, and causing deaths miles apart up and down the coast of West Maui, and miles apart mauka to makai,” Otake wrote. 

The judge took particular issue with an attempt by Brian to twist the common usage of “at a discrete location” to serve his argument. 

“When asked what his discrete location was during the hearing, counsel for HECO initially said ‘Honolulu,’” Otake wrote. “Of course, it is hard to imagine the entire city of Honolulu as a discrete location. But, when pushed to explain whether he was ‘in’ or ‘at’ Honolulu, his answer that he was ‘at Honolulu’ was certainly curious at best.”

While not assessing the allegations in the lawsuits, Otake’s order provides a summary of the sweeping litigation that at this point includes 90 separate lawsuits. 

Defendants include Hawaiian Electric Industries, Hawaiian Electric Co., Hawaii Electric Light Co., Maui Electric Co., Charter Communications, Oceanic Time Warner, Cincinnati Bell, Hawaiian Telcom, the trustees of the Estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop, Hope Builders, Wainee Land & Homes, the State of Hawaii, Maui County and Herman Andaya.

The plaintiffs “fault HECO and the Telecom Defendants for failing to prevent the Lahaina Fire and its spread by failing to design, construct, inspect, and maintain their infrastructure in a manner necessary to avoid known fire risks, which includes HECO’s refusal to de-energize their facilities on August 8, 2023,” despite warnings that the town was at risk, according to the lawsuits.

The plaintiffs also blame landowners like Kamehameha Schools for failing to properly manage vegetation on their lands, which they say allowed the fire to spread more rapidly.

The suits say the state and Maui County failed to mitigate known wildfire risks on Maui and implement evacuation procedures, “all of which resulted in chaos, destruction, and death.”