The Hawaiʻi Supreme Court ruled that an ongoing dispute over a planned rail station in Kakaʻako should be decided by a jury.
The case involves property containing roughly 25 parcels, or 2 acres, owned by the Howard Hughes Corp., a Texas-based developer that conducts business locally under Victoria Ward Ltd.
The land was taken by the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation in 2018. Construction of the Honolulu rail continues from Aloha Stadium toward downtown Honolulu.
The area from Cooke to Kamakeʻe streets in Kakaʻako was originally slated for a master-planned, mixed-use development within Ward Village.
Previous hearings on the dispute were held in Circuit Court.
Last year, the state Supreme Court took up the case. It largely rested on unsettled points of law over just compensation related to eminent domain and land rather than the rail project.
The high court’s ruling generally sided with the developer’s desire to see a jury rather than a judge decide the merits of this case.
The case returned to the Circuit Court for a future jury trial.
