Category Archives: Housing

Hawaii Supreme Court upholds jury verdict in dispute between neighbors

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The Hawaii Supreme Court this week reversed a 2019 ruling by the Intermediate Court of Appeals and reinstated a Honolulu jury’s award of more than $600,000 to Donna Lee Ching. The decision appears to put an end to a longstanding dispute between Ching and her neighbors over an easement for access to her property in lower Manoa. In this case, Ching’s neighbors were also family, adding sizzle to the tensions between the parties. On the other side of the fence, so to speak, were Denby Dung, Miss Hawaii 2001; her sister, Darah, voted Miss Chinatown in 2003; along with their brother, mother, and uncle, who is Ching’s second cousin.

The Supreme Court’s 46-page decision written by Justice Michael Wilson can be found on the Judiciary website.

The 2019 ICA ruling had overturned an earlier jury verdict in Ching’s favor back in March 2016. The jury at that time agreed the evidence in the case showed the Dung family had engaged in a civil conspiracy against Ching by causing repeated nuisances aimed at making her life miserable, invaded her privacy, and engaged in malicious prosecution. The ICA threw out the jury’s damage award, which included $500,000 in general damages, $100,000 in punitive damages, and $16,600 in special damages, and instead ordered a new trial in the case.

Ching appealed the ICA verdict, and the Supreme Court this week ruled in her favor, and against the Dung family, on each issue raised on appeal. The court ordered that the original jury verdict be reinstated.

Ching was represented by a team of attorneys led by Terry Revere, who has won several large judgements on behalf of condominium owners in several disputes with neighbors or their condominium associations.

The Ching/Dung dispute, which extended over much of two decades, included an astounding array of allegations and cross-allegations raised in the original jury trial which I recounted in a March 2016 Civil Beat column, “Ian Lind: The Dung Sisters’ Family Feud Gets Out Of Control.”

Here’s the lead of that much longer column.

A Circuit Court jury in Honolulu last week awarded more than $600,000 in damages to a Honolulu woman, culminating a decade-long legal dispute between neighbors over a shared driveway that gave rise to rival allegations of harassment, attempted intimidation, trespassing, invasion of privacy, character assassination and more.

Following a three-week trial, the jury found former Miss Hawaii Denby Dung, her sister, Darah, a former Miss Chinatown USA, along with their brother, mother, and uncle, liable for damages to their neighbor, Donna Lee Ching.

The parties are more than neighbors, they are family. Ching and Dixon Dung, the uncle of the Dung sisters and a defendant in the case, are second cousins, according to documents filed in the case.

The jury found members of the Dung family engaged in a civil conspiracy to harass, threaten and intimidate Ching in order to discourage her from pursuing the driveway dispute. The jury also found the Dungs invaded Ching’s privacy and defamed her, including by posting derogatory comments on their shared Facebook page.

I would encourage you to read the column. It’s an amazing tale.

A historic property right around the corner

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Shifting our early morning walk from the beach to the streets of Kahala led to a little discovery right around the corner.

We were near the end of our morning walk, heading home along the short block of Aukai Avenue between Pueo Street and Kealaolu, when we noticed a small, rather nondescript sign in front of a house.

I’ve seen the sign before but never paid any attention. This time we went over to get a closer look, and found that it announced “viewing hours” on the second Saturday of each month.

Peering down the driveway, there wasn’t much of anything to see, as the house was mostly hidden behind a concrete block wall.

Then I noticed a small plaque on a wall on the other side of the driveway. The house, it seems, is considered a “Historic Residence,” not because of who lived there, but because it was designed by renowned Hawaii architect Vladimir Ossipoff.

I guess we’ll have to check it out on the second Saturday, May 9, during the posted viewing hours.

In the meantime, I went looking for information on Gardner and Esther Black, and the history of the house.

Dr. Black’s obituary which appeared in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on January 4, 1963 provides some background.

Black graduated from the University of Chicago medical school, then was an intern at Queen’s Hospital in 1921-22. In 1921, he married Esther King of Lake Forest, Illinois.

Black served as president of the Honolulu County Medical Society between 1939-40. In 1949, he moved to the Big Island, where he served as the Parker Ranch physician until 1955. He died at age 66.

After Dr. and Mrs. Black moved to Kamueala, the Ossipoff-designed property became the home of Kenneth J. Pratt and his wife, Mildred Wriston Pratt. Kenneth Pratt was a long-time Bank of Hawaii vice-president, and brother of former Hawaiian Electric president C. Dudley Pratt.

Pratt was, according to an obituary: ““Canoe steersman, surfer, Bank of Hawaii vice-president and oral historian.” Among his legacies are a wonderful series of oral history interviews with prominent Hawaii watermen done on behalf of the Outrigger Canoe Club’s Oral History Committee. Many of these interviews can be easily found online.

After Mildred Pratt’s death in 2007, the house was listed for sale at $2.3 million, later reduced to $2.2 million.

11,800 sq ft lot in “old Kahala” with huge back yard and pool towards the front. Refurbished 3 bdrm, 2 bath plus 1 bdrm, 1 bath cottage. See this beauty today!

Real estate records show it was purchased by its current owners for $1.5 million in 2009.

In 2014, the “Dr. Gardner and Esther Black Residence” was listed on the Hawaii Register of Historic Places.

It is currently listed “For Rent” on Apartments.com for $6,500 per month with a minimum 6-month lease.

As a historic property, the current owners pay just $300 annually in real property tax.

Kahala: Prestigious address, often pretentious designs

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Instead of enjoying the sunrise from a spot along the beach in Kahala, this was Day #2 of walking around the neighborhood. It does give you a different perspective on the world.

Let’s see. Imagine that you’re designing a house to fit into our lush, semi-tropical surroundings and allow easy, inside-outside living. What’s the first design principle that comes to mind?

Apparently for many architects, Hawaii is just the place for…columns. Yes, that’s right. Columns to frame your front door or entryway.

Here are a few examples of houses with columns that we walked past this morning. Click below to see the photos.

Columns

It isn’t just that there’s nothing that says or even hints at “Hawaii” in the design of any of these houses.

And those columns. It’s as if the architects were unaware of where these homes were located, or perhaps just didn’t care.

But I’ll leave the design criticism to Kate Wagner, an architecture and cultural critic based in Washington, DC, the author of “McMansion Hell“, a blog that roasts a number of design elements of these pretentious homes.

Here’s how she begins her chapter, “McMansions 101: Columns.”

You know what the point of columns are? To support shit.

However, 99% of the time, McMansion builders didn’t care about that. To them, columns were there to show how rich you were. They put columns (also called pillars) on goddamn everything, even if it didn’t match the style of the house, or made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

In any case, enjoy Wagner’s chapter on columns. It’s educational as well as entertaining.

A drive-by 57 years later

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Back in 1963, I took a photo a couple of blocks from the house where I grew up, and where my parents lived for about seven decades. The photo was taken from a car on Moho Street at the corner of Makaiwa. Ahead at the end of the next block is Kahala Elementary School. The rear of Diamond Head looms in the background. I found a copy of the scanned image while backing up data from several old hard drives, part of my attempt to do useful work as we “shelter in place” in our current home. If you haven’t figured it out, it’s my parents’ old house. The same one. A couple of blocks from the street corner in the photos.

The two photos appear below. The top, taken in 1963. Below, a photo in the same location taken this week.

At first glance, it looks like little has changed.

But looking closer, I see many subtle differences.

• In the 1963 photo, I count more than a half-dozen coconut trees. None remain in 2020.

• Tall Areca Palms are now visible in yards on both sides of the street.

• In 1963, most of the houses have well manicured hedges in front. Those have been replaced by walls, either half height or full height, although some walls are concealed by landscaping.

• In 1963, there’s a relatively small tree in front of the school. Fifty-seven years later, it blocks most of the view of Diamond Head.

• There were two light poles on the right side of the street in 1963. In 2020, they have been replaced with new poles in much the same style, and the addition of a third on the corner just across from the school.

• In June 1963, a 3-bedroom home on this block of Moho Street was offered for sale. The home had been built in 1952. Asking price in 1963: $31,750.

The same home today is assessed for tax purposes at $1,566,900, real estate records show.

1963

2020