So much for those New Year resolutions!

I was fully intending to finish a post yesterday on a recent court case again pushing the legal theory that the State of Hawaii does not actually have legal right to the public land it controls. No court has yet given credence to these legal theories, but that doesn’t seem to stop some activists, and a few attorneys, from trying again. And again.

When my plan to get it posted yesterday proved too ambitious, I thought that I would certainly be finished by this morning.

But, unfortunately, it’s not ready for prime time. You’ll just have to remain in suspense for at least another day.

I’m looking at a recent Hawaii court decision that is one of a long train of court cases brought by or on behalf of Windyceslau D. Lorenzo. I doubt most of you will recognize his name, and are likely equally unfamiliar with his claim to the title of Kamehameha VI, King of all the Hawaiian Islands. He is, of course, just one of several claimants to the throne of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Or the Kingdom of Hawaii, if that semantic difference is important to you.

I haven’t yet located the earliest case in which Lorenzo raised similar issues. But in 1989, Lorenzo and others took over a state-owned parcel of land in Waimanalo. They were eventually evicted, but Lorenzo filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that his due process rights had been violated because he was actually the owner of the Waimanalo land.

Lorenzo lost the case, and then appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the ruling.

Here’s an excerpt from the 9th Circuit opinion:

Due Process Violation

Lorenzo claimed that defendants violated his right to due process by evicting him from the land because he had title to the land. The procedural due process requirements of the fourteenth amendment apply only when a constitutionally protected liberty or property interest is at stake.

Here, Lorenzo’s only evidence of a property right in the land is a purported “deed” from Rose P. Lorenzo, dated 1988, which grants 6970 acres of land, including the parcel at issue, to Lorenzo. Lorenzo did not provide any evidence of how Rose P. Lorenzo acquired title to the property. Defendants provided a title report tracing the state of Hawaii’s title to the land back to the beginning of the Hawaiian Monarchy. Given this evidence, the district court correctly granted summary judgment for defendants on Lorenzo’s due process claims because Lorenzo had no protected interest in the property.

AFFIRMED.

Anyway, more on the latest court decision soon.