Marco Polo High-Rise Fire: Wrongful-Death Settlement for Four Victims' Families
Won by Leavitt, Yamane & Soldner.
Leavitt, Yamane & Soldner, alongside two co-counsel firms, secured a confidential settlement for families of the four people killed in the July 2017 Marco Polo condominium fire in Honolulu, the costliest fire in Hawaii history.
What happened
On July 14, 2017, a fire ignited on the 26th floor of the Marco Polo Apartments at 2333 Kapiolani Boulevard in Honolulu. The 568-unit building, constructed in 1971, had no sprinkler system. What started in unit 2602 became a seven-alarm fire that took more than 130 firefighters over four hours to contain. The blaze destroyed approximately 30 units concentrated on floors 26 through 28 and caused an estimated $107 million in damage, making it the most costly fire in Hawaii history.
Four residents died. Britt Reller, 54, and Jean Dilley, 87, were killed in the fire itself. Joann M. Kuwata, 71, also died that day. Marilyn Van Gieson, 81, survived the initial blaze but died on August 3, 2017, from complications. Investigators ultimately listed the cause as undetermined because damage to the unit of origin was too extensive to establish a definitive ignition source.
In July 2018, Leavitt, Yamane & Soldner filed suit on behalf of the victims' estates and injured claimants, joining forces with Revere & Associates and Davis Levin Livingston. The defendants included the building's property management companies, the Association of Apartment Owners of Marco Polo Apartments, and Ohana Control Systems. The complaints alleged that defendants failed to install sprinklers, maintain working fire alarms and emergency lighting, prevent propped-open fire doors from spreading smoke, and bring the building's fire-safety systems up to city code requirements. Approximately two dozen lawsuits stemming from the fire were eventually consolidated before Circuit Judge Dean Ochiai.
After mediation, a global settlement was reached. On November 5, 2019, the parties placed the terms on the record in open court. The financial terms were sealed, though one plaintiff had referenced a figure of approximately $26 million in payouts from insurers and the condo association. Judge Ochiai ordered disbursements from an escrow account to be completed by January 15, 2020. Former state Attorney General David Louie represented the defense.
The settlement resolved all wrongful-death and injury claims arising from the fire. Hawaii legislators subsequently passed a law requiring sprinkler retrofits in high-rise buildings lacking them, a direct legislative response to the Marco Polo tragedy.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Honolulu Star-Advertiser: Families of Marco Polo fire victims sue property managers, condo board (July 12, 2018)·Archived copy
- 2.Honolulu Star-Advertiser: Settlement reached in deadly Marco Polo fire (Nov. 6, 2019)·Archived copy
- 3.Hawaii News Now: Settlement reached over deadly 2017 Marco Polo fire (Nov. 6, 2019)·Archived copy
- 4.Claims Journal: Undisclosed Settlement Reached Over Deadly Honolulu Fire (Nov. 8, 2019)·Archived copy
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Related wrongful death verdicts
In December 2011, a Fayette County, Texas jury awarded the family of an 8-year-old Splendora boy $150.37 billion after he was doused with gasoline and set on fire by a 13-year-old neighbor in 1998, two weeks after the same neighbor sexually assaulted him. The boy survived third-degree burns over 99 percent of his body for nearly 13 years before dying in April 2011 of a skin cancer linked to his injuries. The defendant, Don Wilburn Collins, never appeared to answer the civil suit, and the jury awarded $370 million in actual damages plus roughly $150 billion in punitive damages, the largest civil verdict in U.S. history. Attorney Craig Sico, who represented the family, said from the outset that the judgment was not collectible and was intended to pressure prosecutors into reopening the long-dormant criminal case. Prosecutors did reopen the case, and Collins was later convicted of capital murder in a separate criminal proceeding.
A Pensacola jury awarded Cynthia Robinson $23.6 billion in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds over the 1996 lung cancer death of her 36-year-old husband, the largest single-plaintiff award of Florida's Engle tobacco litigation, but the trial judge called the number constitutionally excessive, an appeals court ordered a full retrial over improper closing arguments, and a second jury returned a complete defense verdict in 2019, so the estate ultimately collected nothing.
Frantz Law Group, representing roughly 5,000 victims, helped negotiate a $13.5 billion PG&E bankruptcy settlement covering tens of thousands of survivors and families from the 2015 Butte, 2017 North Bay, and 2018 Camp wildfires.
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