On the Second Anniversary of the Lahaina Fire

Two years ago today, a fire driven by extreme winds tore through Lahaina, a historic town on the island of Maui. More than 100 people died. Thousands lost their homes, their businesses, and their place. The legal aftermath has been described in dollars and procedures, but the date is about people first.

This is a short post — less of a legal explainer and more of a check-in.

What the legal system has done

The legal response to the fire has been, by mass-tort standards, fast. Cases were filed within weeks. Coordination in Hawaii state court was put in place quickly. A global settlement framework of approximately $4 billion was announced in August 2024, just over a year after the fire. The Hawaii Supreme Court addressed a critical question about how insurer subrogation interacts with the settlement in early 2025, in a way that materially helped survivors keep more of what was set aside for them. Allocation work has been underway since.

By comparison, mass-tort proceedings of similar scale and complexity often take three or four years to reach an initial settlement framework, and longer to reach individual claimants. The Lahaina proceeding has moved more quickly than most.

That speed matters. It does not undo the loss, and it does not make the allocation process simple, but it has reduced the years of uncertainty that survivors of comparable disasters have faced. There is still a lot of work ahead, and not all of it will be smooth, but the procedural posture two years in is healthier than it might have been.

What still matters for survivors

A few things worth knowing as the second anniversary passes:

• Allocation is the active phase. For most survivors, the question is no longer whether there will be a recovery; it is what their individual recovery will look like under the allocation process. Documentation of what was lost, what was insured, and what the family endured is the work of this phase.
• Insurance and tort recoveries interact. Survivors who received insurance payments will see subrogation considerations in their allocation. The 2025 Hawaii Supreme Court ruling addressed a major piece of this analysis but did not resolve every question. How insurance proceeds, tort recovery, and any government assistance fit together is fact-specific.
• Tax treatment is its own subject. Wildfire settlements have nuanced federal and state tax treatment. The taxability of property-damage allocations, replacement-property gain, and personal-injury components is rarely intuitive and should be reviewed with a tax professional alongside legal counsel.
• Mental-health support continues to matter. Survivors of disaster-scale events sometimes find that the legal process — interviews, document gathering, depositions — surfaces difficult memories. Counsel that handles mass-tort wildfire matters should be aware of that and willing to coordinate with other resources where helpful.

What the firm does

For California clients with a Lahaina connection — whether they owned property in Lahaina, lost a family member there, or were on the island at the time — the firm participates in the Hawaii proceeding through pro-hac-vice arrangements with Hawaii co-counsel. The firm does not hold itself out as Hawaii-licensed and does not undertake to represent clients in Hawaii state court except in coordination with admitted Hawaii counsel and under the local court's rules.

If you are affected by the Lahaina fire and want to talk through where you stand, please reach out. Initial consultations are at no cost.

A closing note

Anniversaries of events like the Lahaina fire are not legal milestones. They are a time when the families and businesses most affected look around and take stock of where they are, two years on. The legal system has done more than it sometimes does, and it has not done everything that needs doing. There is still a great deal of work, both legal and otherwise.

To everyone in the Lahaina community — and to the families whose loved ones were lost in the fire — we are thinking of you today.

This article is general information and not legal advice. The Lahaina wildfire proceeding involves Hawaii law and Hawaii-admitted counsel; specific situations need specific review with current authority and counsel admitted in the relevant jurisdiction.