This case involves disabled students and the Hawaii Disability Rights Center challenging Hawaii's Act 163, which imposes a 20-year age limit on public high school attendance, as a violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act's requirement to provide a free appropriate public education (FAPE) until age 22 unless a state applies the same limit to general education students. Plaintiffs also alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act, and argued that adult education programs like CB and GED allow general education students to continue past age 20, meaning special education students should not be denied services. The court denied the plaintiffs' motions for summary judgment and a preliminary injunction without prejudice, granted in part and denied in part the defendant's motion to dismiss or for summary judgment without prejudice, and found that plaintiffs failed to show regular state practice of placing general education students in adult programs beyond age 20 or to adequately plead certain claims. The decision rested on the lack of evidence that Act 163 is inconsistently applied compared to prior rulings in B.T. v. Department of Education and on procedural deficiencies in the complaint.
This case is a declaratory judgment action by Nautilus Insurance Company against its insured Hawk Transport Services, LLC, to determine whether a commercial general liability policy provides coverage for claims in an underlying federal lawsuit. The underlying suit, brought under CERCLA and Hawaii law, alleged that Hawk transported and disposed of hazardous solid waste on leased agricultural property, resulting in EPA removal costs exceeding $650,000 and related tort claims for waste, trespass, and nuisance. The court granted Nautilus's motion for summary judgment, holding that the policy afforded no coverage. It reasoned that the Total Pollution Exclusion, Contractor and Subcontractor Exclusion, and Auto Exclusion each independently barred all claims because they arose from Hawk's or its subcontractor's transportation and dumping of pollutants.
This consolidated bankruptcy appeal addresses whether native Hawaiian debtors' leasehold interests in real property under the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act (HHCA) qualify as property of the estate that must be valued in a hypothetical Chapter 7 liquidation under 11 U.S.C. § 1325(a)(4) when confirming a Chapter 13 plan. The debtors had proposed plans that estimated zero distribution to general unsecured creditors based on their valuation of the leaseholds as having no equity, but the trustee objected that higher market values would yield a greater recovery in liquidation. The district court affirmed the bankruptcy court's decision, holding that the leaseholds are estate property because they could be transferred to other native Hawaiians with Department of Hawaiian Home Lands consent during liquidation. The court reasoned that nothing in the HHCA or fiduciary duties prevents such transfers and that the debtors failed to show the leases would have zero or negligible value in a Chapter 7 proceeding.
In this case, homeowners Michael A. Labuanan and Janell R.N. Lai-Labuanan sued U.S. Bank National Association, Bank of America, and other lenders over a 2006 mortgage loan on their Hawaii property, claiming predatory lending practices and violations of federal and state laws. The complaint alleged eleven counts, including TILA violations for rescission and damages, RESPA breaches, UDAP, fraud, civil conspiracy, aiding and abetting, and claims related to securitization, lack of standing for foreclosure, and wrongful conversion of the note. The court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim, finding that the TILA claims were time-barred or inapplicable to nonjudicial foreclosure, and that other claims lacked sufficient factual or legal support, while granting plaintiffs leave to file an amended complaint.
The case involved a Hawaii resident who received a medical malpractice settlement and invested the funds with defendants including Bank of New York Mellon entities and individual managers; after incurring losses tied to a line of credit and market downturn, the plaintiff sued in Hawaii state court alleging violations of Hawaii securities and consumer protection laws, breach of fiduciary duty, contract, negligence, misrepresentation, and related claims. Defendants removed the case to federal court and moved to dismiss or transfer it pursuant to a forum selection clause in the September 10, 2007 investment account agreement designating California courts. The court granted the motion in part by enforcing the clause and transferred the action to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, determining under the Bremen standard and 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) that the clause was valid, applied to the dispute, and that private and public interest factors supported transfer rather than dismissal.
In Sakugawa v. Countrywide Bank F.S.B., plaintiff Lorelei Aki Sakugawa sued Countrywide Bank and Service Link over a 2007 mortgage loan on her Hawaii property, claiming she was lured into a predatory loan through deception and improper qualification, with allegations spanning declaratory and injunctive relief, breach of implied covenant, TILA and RESPA violations, rescission, UDAP, breach of fiduciary duty, unconscionability, predatory lending, and quiet title. The court granted in part and denied in part the defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), dismissing all claims against the defendants except the TILA rescission claim, which survived. The core reasoning was that most counts lacked a cognizable legal theory or sufficient factual allegations when taken as true, such as inadequate pleading for contract or fiduciary claims and statutory bars or pleading deficiencies for others like UDAP and quiet title, while the TILA rescission claim met the minimum threshold for proceeding.
