Maui wildfire survivors are approaching the point when settlement checks for losses from the August 2023 fires may finally start arriving, but many people doubt the money will cover what they lost. Leslie Clark, who lost her home near Front Street in Lahaina, said worrying about uncertainty is “not good for your health,” adding, “It’s not good for anything.” Attorneys and advocates said the settlement process could determine payouts that leave survivors far from made-whole amounts.
Jake Lowenthal, a Maui lawyer who leads liaison counsel for the plaintiffs, said settlement checks could begin as early as June. He said the distribution is not expected to arrive as a single payment; instead, victims would receive the settlement in four payments over time. Lowenthal also said a team of claims administrators will apply a “complicated set of criteria” that place claims into 10 categories, including whether a person was injured or lost their home.
While details of the final amounts are still to be determined, Lowenthal said some deductions are likely to apply before survivors see the net value. He said insurance companies will be able to claim a portion of the settlement for certain victims like Clark, who had property insurance. The arrangements are intended to coordinate recoveries so that insurers can recoup money they paid rather than leaving them responsible for losses that are later covered through the settlement.
The lawyers’ take is another major component of how the settlement may shake out for individuals. Plaintiffs’ attorneys have sought 25% of what they win for their clients, but the request still needs approval from Maui Circuit Court Judge Peter Cahill. The judge has been skeptical of the idea, with his approach focusing on fairness in legal-fee calculations and concerns about lawyers who may not have done the majority of the work.
In describing his concerns, Cahill framed the dispute as how to fairly compensate lawyers who paid for investigations and spent substantial time litigating the case, without unfairly enriching attorneys he characterized as “free-riding” by taking on clients after the settlement had already been reached. Cahill has favored establishing a “common benefit fund” in which lawyers, including those he views as free-riders, would contribute a portion of their fees that would then be redistributed to the lawyers who did the bulk of the work. Plaintiffs’ lawyers, by contrast, have asked for 25% across the board, and Cahill’s earlier comments during a March hearing indicate he has not been persuaded.
In court, Cahill pressed Lowenthal about the scale of the requested fees, describing the settlement amount as a total of about $4.03 billion and noting that victims had not “seen a penny” even though the settlement was finalized on August 19, 2024 and the March hearing date was March 27, 2026. Cahill also told Lowenthal that it might be “helpful to hear from your clients” about attorneys’ fees, describing a need for a voice for plaintiffs regarding the fee structure. Lowenthal said the across-the-board percentage was fairest for the lawyers, and Cahill responded by suggesting a different percentage approach—saying, “How about if we propose everybody gets 2 1/2%?”
Insurance recoveries may also reduce settlement payouts even for survivors who already had coverage. For medical insurers, the process Lowenthal described is tied to liens: insurers can file for liens on medical claims they paid, and the claims administrators would subtract those amounts from the settlement money and then send what is left to the victim. For property insurers, the process is more complicated because of the unique nature of the Maui case and the way it was structured.
Hawaiʻi Supreme Court decisions addressed the ability of property insurers to pursue claims. The story described that the court determined property insurers could not sue Hawaiian Electric Co. and other parties accused of contributing to the disaster, and that property insurers would instead have to file liens in a manner analogous to medical insurers’ approach. Over time, insurers and plaintiffs’ lawyers then agreed to a deal in which property insurers would receive 10% of claims paid to Maui policyholders from each settlement payment.
Advocacy group fellow Sherry Peterson, who has worked with Maui wildfire survivors through United Policyholders, said that for many victims there is not enough money to make households whole. She said the number of plaintiffs seeking a portion of the settlement and the total number of unique claims are large, with 21,750 plaintiffs resulting in 94,816 unique claims across 10 victim categories. Peterson said the most frequent claims involved people who were displaced or who had to escape the burn zone.
Peterson said some survivors will still be left short even before attorneys’ and insurers’ shares are factored in. She described her views after sitting with victims of the disaster, saying, “My personal opinion, having sat with many victims of this disaster, is that none of them are going to be made whole by this,” and adding, “No matter how you dice the carrot, there’s just not enough carrot for the soup.” Clark said she had to hire a private insurance adjuster to get $1.3 million to rebuild, but she said it was not enough to rebuild her two-story home that housed 15 extended family members before the fire.
Even though insurers will take a portion of the settlement for certain policyholders, Peterson said the settlement may still not resolve the underlying coverage gaps that existed before or after the fires. She said Maui County estimates show a significant level of uninsured and underinsured housing, and she described the practical difficulty for uninsured owners to find help, particularly for those still dealing with trauma and reluctance to accept charity. She said the county’s estimates also suggest that many homeowners who had insurance were still underinsured, with typical policies falling short of rebuilding costs.
Peterson said the remaining problem for survivors is that many people do not know how much they will ultimately receive from the settlement before deciding whether to rebuild. She said people need to see “what they’re going to get from the lawsuit before they rebuild,” and she asked how households can plan if they do not know what that will look like. The final settlement value survivors keep may also depend on whether federal lawmakers act on an expired income tax exemption for wildfire settlements, an issue Peterson and others said could affect how much survivors ultimately receive.