Gov. Neil Abercrombie came into office promising a new day.

But he won’t be able to forget yesterday’s problems. The new governor inherited the burden of at least a dozen class action lawsuits that were filed against the state under previous administrations.

The class actions suits – which could cost Hawaii as much as $200 million – may complicate the governor’s pursuit of his own agenda at a time when the state’s finances are still troubled. His response to the lawsuits may be an early sign of how his administration will contrast with former Gov. Linda Lingle‘s.

Not to mention provide a clear indication of how his top legal adviser, the yet-to-be-named attorney general, will differ from Lingle’s pick, Mark Bennett.

Class action suits, which can often result in large monetary outcomes because a single case can literally represent thousands of plaintiffs, have a history in Hawaii politics.

Landmark cases like the Felix class action suit from 1993 forced the state to spend more than a billion dollars to improve education services for disabled students. More recently, a class action suit was brought (and dropped) against Hawaii to try and halt Furlough Fridays in schools.

Paul Alston of the law firm Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing says Abercrombie’s choice of an attorney general is critical as the individual will have significant sway over the outcome of the cases. Alston’s firm is representing plaintiffs in a dozen class action suits against the state. (Abercrombie’s transition director, Bill Kaneko, is a lawyer at the firm.) Attorney Eric Seitz also has a class action suit against the state stemming from overcrowded conditions at the Hawaii Community Correctional Center in Hilo.

“They have lots of leeway over all these cases,” Alston told Civil Beat, referring to the Abercrombie administration’s options. “There are settlements to be made in every one of these cases.”

Maunalua Bay Case

One of the bigger suits the next AG will have to deal with is the Maunalua Bay Beach Ohanas V. State of Hawaii class action case; it asserts that a 2003 statute – Act 73 – amounted to an illegal taking of private property by the state.

Act 73 claimed that natural, permanent accumulations of sand belonged to the public, not beachfront property owners. The case dealt with accreted land, essentially the opposite of erosion, where properties have grown over the years because of constantly changing shorelines. A group of beachfront property owners, who called themselves the Maunalua Bay Beach Ohana, filed suit against the state saying that Act 73, which transferred ownership of accreted lands to the government, was illegal.

On Dec. 30, 2009, the Intermediate Court of Appeals ruled on the case, saying that owners did not have a right to future accreted land but that accreted land accumulated before 2003 that the state claimed had been taken unlawfully.

Alston said the judgment could amount to more than a $100 million tab for the Abercrombie administration. The next attorney general will have to settle the case with property owners, determining if the state will pay the citizens for the taken land or simply return it to them. The decision could have major consequences not only for the state’s coffers but also for the public perception of how Abercrombie deals with private property rights.

Other Cases

Civil Beat requested a list of all pending class action suits against the state but the Department of the Attorney General declined our request, citing lack of resources and time constraints.

Below is a list of pending class action suits provided by Alston’s firm, reflecting the cases it has brought against the state:

Alston described the financial implications of some of the cases above (He emphasized these were just estimates, and that he didn’t have figures for all of them): The Kono case could be north of $10 million; The Faletogo and McMillion cases, in terms of the repairs required, will fall in the range of $5 to $10 million; The R.P.K. case will be in the millions; The Everson case could come to more than $10 million; The Maunalua case could come to more than $100 million; The Garner/Klitnerick case could range anywhere from $20 million to $30 million; The Sound and Korab cases could be up to $20 million; The HDRC case could be “huge” and could be in the tens of millions of dollars.

Just from the dozen class action suits Alston’s firm is handling, Abercrombie could be on the hook for close to $200 million. That’s bad news for a governor walking in to an already difficult budget situation, and especially bad news for a governor who has promised more government services.