Maui and Eaton: Two Wildfires, Two Approaches to Mass-Tort Coordination

The Lahaina wildfire of August 2023 and the Eaton wildfire of January 2025 produced two of the most consequential mass-tort proceedings of the past several years. The two events are different in important ways — different jurisdictions, different defendant landscapes, different populations affected — but the procedural responses to them illuminate how coordinated wildfire litigation works, and where it can do better.

This post is a comparative look at the two proceedings, written as a closing note for this stretch of mass-tort posts.

What was similar

Both fires were single-event catastrophes driven by extreme wind conditions that overwhelmed local infrastructure and emergency response. Both were attributed in significant part to electric-utility distribution equipment and the conditions in which that equipment was operated. Both produced large populations of affected property owners, renters, business owners, and personal-injury and wrongful-death claimants. Both moved into coordinated legal proceedings that consolidated the cases under a single procedural framework.

In each, the structural challenge was the same: how do you handle thousands of related cases — each with its own facts, each with its own claimant — in a way that produces fair outcomes without retrying the same factual questions thousands of times?

What was different

The two proceedings differ in several important respects:

Jurisdiction. The Lahaina cases are in Hawaii state court, governed by Hawaii law and Hawaii's particular statutory and common-law framework. The Eaton cases are in California state court, governed by California's JCCP framework and California substantive law. The procedural mechanisms for coordination, the specific subrogation and government-claims rules, and the available immunities all differ between the two jurisdictions.

Coordination mechanism. Hawaii does not have a JCCP-equivalent statute by that name; the Lahaina cases were consolidated under the procedural mechanisms available in Hawaii state court. California has its JCCP framework under Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 404 et seq. The functional similarities are significant — both centralize pretrial work under a single judge — but the procedural particulars are not identical.

Pace. The Lahaina proceeding moved unusually quickly to a global settlement framework, reaching that point in roughly twelve months. The Eaton proceeding has not yet reached a comparable settlement framework as of the firm's current writing. Whether the Lahaina pace was an outlier or whether the Eaton proceeding will follow a similar timeline remains to be seen; the early phases of the Eaton proceeding have not been slower than other comparably-sized California wildfire proceedings.

Defendant landscape. Hawaiian Electric is the principal defendant in the Lahaina proceeding, with significant additional defendants including Maui County, the State of Hawaii, and large landowners. Southern California Edison is the principal defendant in the Eaton proceeding, with public-entity defendants in some configurations. The defendant configurations have shaped the negotiation dynamics in each.

Subrogation framework. The Hawaii Supreme Court's 2025 ruling on insurer subrogation in the Lahaina settlement was specific to that proceeding and to Hawaii law. California has its own framework on insurance-tort coordination, which will apply to the Eaton proceeding as it matures. Whether the California courts adopt reasoning similar to the Hawaii ruling, or take a different path, is one of the open questions of the Eaton proceeding.

What the comparison shows

Three observations from comparing the two proceedings:

1. Coordinated proceedings can move quickly when the parties want them to. The Lahaina proceeding's pace toward a global settlement framework was unusual. It happened because the principal defendants engaged in serious settlement discussions early, the plaintiff group was effectively organized, and the coordination court actively pushed the schedule. None of those factors are guaranteed in any particular case; the Eaton proceeding's pace will depend on whether similar factors line up.

2. The relationship between insurance and tort recovery is a recurring battleground. Both the Lahaina proceeding (through the Hawaii Supreme Court ruling) and the Eaton proceeding (through the procedural work to come) have had to address how insurer subrogation interacts with mass-tort settlement allocation. Different jurisdictions' frameworks produce different answers; for survivors, the question of how subrogation is handled is consequential.

3. Local factors matter enormously. The character of the affected community, the financial capacity of the principal defendant, the local rebuilding economics, the specific facts of how the fire ignited and spread — all of these vary, and they shape the litigation. There is no single template for "wildfire mass tort"; each is its own animal.

Practical implications

For survivors of either fire, two practical implications follow from the comparison:

• Don't assume your case will follow the other proceeding's path. A Lahaina survivor cannot expect their proceeding's outcome to track an analogous California case; an Eaton survivor cannot expect their proceeding's outcome to track Lahaina's. The differences in jurisdiction, defendants, and procedural posture matter.
• Counsel familiar with the specific proceeding adds value. The procedural particulars of either proceeding are specific to that proceeding. Counsel who has worked through the procedural questions of that specific proceeding generally produces better outcomes for individual claimants than counsel that approaches the case as if it were a generic personal-injury matter.

Where the firm fits in both

The firm represents California claimants in Eaton fire matters as part of the JCCP. For Lahaina-connected California residents, the firm participates in the Hawaii proceeding through pro-hac-vice arrangements with Hawaii co-counsel.

If you have questions about either proceeding and where you stand, please reach out for a no-cost initial consultation.

A closing note: the legal proceedings discussed here are about real catastrophic events that happened to real people. Where the legal system is doing its job, it produces meaningful recovery for those harmed; where it is not, the failure compounds an already-significant loss. The work of getting these things right matters.

This article is general information and not legal advice. Coordinated wildfire mass-tort proceedings involve jurisdiction-specific rules and proceeding-specific procedural orders; specific situations need specific review with current authority and counsel admitted in the relevant jurisdiction.