State's net in gas price settlements to be $23M
By John Duchemin
Advertiser Staff Writer
The state will net about $22.5 million after lawyers' fees, expenses and other costs are deducted from the settlements in its nearly four-year-long price-fixing lawsuit against Hawai'i's oil industry.
In one of the last court filings of the legal battle, private and state attorneys this week requested U.S. District Court Judge Samuel King approve more than $4.2 million in new costs and fees, pushing the total bill to more than $12.5 million.
If King approves the fees, that would leave Hawai'i with about $22.5 million out of the $35 million total it received in two separate settlements with oil companies.
The state had sought $2 billion from seven oil companies it accused of fixing prices and gouging Hawai'i consumers.
According to filings Monday by San Francisco law firm and lead state counsel Hosie Frost Large & McArthur, the lawyers' bill breaks into two parts: costs, for which the law firm and state attorney general's office want reimbursement; and fees, which are a percentage of the winnings that the state agreed to pay its lawyers.
Legal costs for the suit exceeded $5.3 million, according to the Monday filing, and include millions billed by law firms including Hosie Frost Large & McArthur and co-counsels Galiher DeRobertis Nakamura Ono Takitani.
Other costs include more than $500,000 generated by the state attorney general's office; hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel bills and photocopying expenses; more than $58,000 paid to Clyde Matsui, a Honolulu lawyer who helped mediate the settlement; and more than $100,000 in "notice expenses" to tell class-action plaintiffs — Hawai'i residents — about the settlement.
Fees sought by the state's lawyers exceed $7 million, or 22 percent of the settlement after expenses.
Hawai'i has some of the highest gasoline prices in the country, and the state argued that Chevron led a conspiracy to keep those prices artificially high. Chevron denied the claim, saying prices are high because it's a small market.
Two firms, Tesoro Petroleum Corp. and BHP Hawaii Inc., settled with the state in 1998 for $15 million. The remaining five defendants — Chevron, Shell, Texaco, Unocal and Tosco — settled in January for $20 million. All denied the charges.
