More than a month after the Hawaii Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Turtle Bay case, attorneys are still filing documents asking for reconsideration, and the filings are growing increasingly acerbic.

A brief was filed last week by the Land Use Research Foundation of Hawaii on behalf of “virtually every major lending institution, land use and environmental law firm, landowner and developer in Hawaii,” who were stunned by the ruling.

At their May 13 meeting, the group said what had been a predictable information-gathering stage has been converted into a major permitting requirement. They worried about the potential for repeated legal challenges.

“In its present stance, the opinion will otherwise almost certainly bring land development in Hawaii to an abrupt halt,” LURF Executive Director David Arakawa and University of Hawaii law professor David Callies wrote in the brief.

Read the full filing and the Supreme Court’s decision.

When I spoke with Arakawa last month about the implications of the case, he said it was still being reviewed and the big picture was not yet visible. Judging by last week’s filing, it seems that confusion has given way to frustration. I’m not an attorney, but the brief was among the most pointed I’ve read. It concluded:

“We fail altogether to discern anything positive in such outcomes for the State of Hawaii, unless the end game is to leave development decisions ultimately in the hands of an unelected, unappointed, unrepresentative and increasingly militant and antidevelopment fragment of this state’s population, which population ultimately depends upon the development community for the construction of its homes, its businesses, and its industry, where people live and work. We remain confident that this honorable Court cannot inadvertently mean to support such an outcome.”

The first thing that came to mind when I read that last paragraph was Jack Nicholson’s iconic “you can’t handle the truth” speech at the end of “A Few Good Men.” That’s not a judgment on the merits of the arguments, just a comparison of the tones. I’d love to hear if any of you agree in our conversation. Here’s the video: