I noticed a couple of recent Hawaii Supreme Court decisions of note.

Electronic signatures

On Monday, February 1, the court finally rejected the attempt to impeach former city prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro utilizing online petitions signed electronically, rather than traditional petitions containing handwritten signatures. The court said the law allows government agencies, including the city clerk, may decide whether or not to accept electronic signatures as valid.

Local businessman Tracy Yoshimura had challenged the Honolulu city clerk’s position that petitions seeking to trigger impeachment proceedings are required to contain “the full legible names, handwritten (not electronic) signatures, and residence addresses of at least 500 signatories.”

Yoshimura, who was locked in a feud with Kaneshiro over the legality of gaming machines sold by Yoshimura’s company, launched his initial impeachment petition using change.org in December 2018, and quickly followed it with a second petition based on electronic signatures collected through the DocuSign system used by many businesses, including banks.

Yoshimura challenged the city’s refusal to consider the online petitions. He pointed to HRS § 489E-7(d) (2008), which states, in part, “If a law requires a signature, an electronic signature satisfies the law.”

However, another section of the same law exempts government agencies from the electronic signature requirement, and provides that each agency can determine “whether, and the extent to which, it will send and accept electronic records and signatures….”

In response, Yoshimura argued the city couldn’t make such a decision on the fly, but instead should have go through a formal rulemaking process before it could refuse to accept electronic signatures.

For what seemed like a relatively simple question, there court had to trace the tangled procedural and legal history of the impeachment case, which it did in Monday’s 62-page decision.

Hu Honua

In a second decision on a case of public importance, the court rejected the request by Hu Honua Bioenergy to simply order the Public Utilities Commission to throw out two orders the commission issued last year that stripped the company’s proposed wood burning power plant on the Hamakua Coast of its previously granted waiver from having to go through a competitive bidding process in order to win a contract to provide power to Big Island consumers.

It its petition to the court last September, Hu Honua argued it would face devastating consequences if the court did not intervene against the PUC

Failure to provide immediate relief would cause irreparable harm to Hu Honua’s constitutional due process rights; catastrophic financial damage to Hu Honua; and a devastating loss of income to the Hu Honua workforce and their families during this pandemic.

But in a brief 2-page decision, the court cited an earlier case that found the relief being sought, a writ of mandamus, “is an extraordinary remedy that will not issue unless the petitioner demonstrates a clear and indisputable right to relief and a lack of alternative means to redress adequately the alleged wrong or obtain the requested action; it is not intended to supersede the legal discretionary authority of the trial courts, cure a mere legal error, or serve as a legal remedy in lieu of normal appellate procedures.”

The court found those conditions were not met, and ruled Hu Honua arguments are more appropriate for the direct appeal of the PUC’s actions it filed on the same day in September 2020 as its request for an extraordinary writ.

That appeal is pending. On January 19, 2021, Hu Honua filed a motion asking the court to expedite it’s appeal, using language that appears targeted more for public relations than legal effect.

Hu Honua’s renewable energy project (“Project”), which is 99% complete and will provide the State of Hawai`i with numerous immediate and long-term benefits, hangs in the balance following the Public Utilities Commission’s (“PUC”) erroneous and disastrous decision to revoke the Project’s waiver from the Competitive Bidding Framework. The loss of the Project and the benefits it provides, and the PUC’s multiple violations of applicable law, are matters of “significant statewide importance” that the Court must resolve as expeditiously as possible.

Just nine days later, on January 28, the high court denied the motion in a terse single-sentence order signed by Associate Justice Todd Eddins.

Here’s the order in its entirety: “Appellant Hu Honua Bioenergy, LLC’s “Motion to Expedite Appeal Filed on September 16, 2020” is denied.”