(NewsNation) — Hawaii’s Supreme Court docket will hear questions on how insurance coverage corporations can recoup cash already paid to policyholders after the devastating 2023 Maui wildfires.
It is a resolution by the state’s excessive courtroom that would change the destiny of a $4 billion settlement made earlier this 12 months.
The August 2023 blaze killed 102 individuals and devastated a part of the island. Officers consider it started from an earlier brushfire that firefighters thought they’d totally extinguished.
Hawaii’s Supreme Court docket issued an order Wednesday asking attorneys on all sides to submit briefs inside the subsequent 40 days.
In a course of referred to as subrogation, insurance coverage corporations which have already paid greater than $2 billion in claims from the wildfire are in search of to convey impartial authorized motion towards defendants blamed for inflicting the tragedy — together with Hawaiian Electrical, Maui County and enormous landowners on the island.
The settlement particularly outlined that insurers cannot go after defendants, that means that Supreme Court docket questions may utterly overrule the settlement in coming months.
“In the event that they rule that the insurance coverage corporations do have an impartial proper to pursue their very own fits towards the identical defendants, then the settlement settlement is null and void, principally,” Jake Lowenthal, one of many attorneys representing particular person plaintiffs, advised the Related Press on Thursday.
These new fits would drain the billions of settlement {dollars}. Nevertheless, if the Supreme Court docket decides towards permitting impartial fits, claims processes will have the ability to proceed for the victims.
The Related Press contributed to this report.
