Maui Wildfire Settlement: The Hawaii Supreme Court Upheld the 3%–10% Fee Caps on September 30, Unblocking $1.1 Billion for 21,750 Claimants — but There Is Still No Official Payout Date, Only an Estimate of “Within the Next Two Months”

If you are one of the 21,750 Maui fire claimants and you typed “maui wildfire settlement payout date,” this is where things stand on October 7, 2026. The appeal that had stopped every payment is over. On September 30, 2026 the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Maui Circuit Judge Peter Cahill had the power to limit what lawyers take out of the $4.037 billion global settlement. The opinion, written by Justice Todd Eddins, opens its answer in two sentences: “Appellants are wrong on the power. Judge Cahill had authority to act.”

What there is not, as of today, is a payment date. No order from the circuit court and no notice from the claims administrator, BrownGreer, sets one. What exists is an estimate from the lawyer who defended the fee order. Cynthia Wong, who served as liaison counsel for the plaintiffs, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on October 1 that she “anticipates that claims administrators will begin to issue payments within the next two months” — by our arithmetic, around the start of December 2026. On October 6 she told Hawaii News Now: “I do anticipate that they will issue money awards within the next month or so.” Treat both as forecasts, not deadlines. Earlier forecasts in this case slipped more than once; when we reported on the September 15 hearing, the hope was payments “by October.”

The money itself is ready. According to the Star-Advertiser, “A little over $1.1 billion has been in a trust account for several months awaiting distribution after earlier disputes, which included claims by insurance companies, were resolved.” That is the first of four equal annual installments from Hawaiian Electric, the State of Hawaii, Kamehameha Schools, Spectrum Oceanic, Hawaiian Telcom and affiliates of West Maui Land Co.

Three lawyers — Anthony Ranken of Ranken & Shnider, Alex Edrenkin of PacLaw Group and John Thickstun of Montegna & Thickstun, who together represent more than 1,000 victims — and claimant Michael Adrian Kahaleala Bates, who lost a home in Lahaina, had challenged Judge Cahill’s fee order of June 5, 2026 (amended June 10). Their main argument was that the court had no power to override the fee contracts survivors had signed; Hawaii law allows up to 25%, which the Star-Advertiser says could have meant up to $1 billion in fees. The Supreme Court accepted the case on August 5, heard argument on September 15 and ruled fifteen days later.

The court gave two reasons Judge Cahill had authority. First, the special proceeding he opened in October 2023 to coordinate the fire cases “never closed. The settlement remained in the court’s hands.” Second, the common fund doctrine lets a court pay from a shared recovery for the common work that built it. The opinion calls the $222 million set-aside “about five and one-half percent of the recovery.”

The appellants did win one point. The court found that three clauses went too far because they shielded fee rulings from review: “the finality declaration, the void-on-appeal clause, and the above-cap payment freeze.” Those clauses are struck. Everything else stands, and the court said plainly that this does not reopen the fee structure: “The Fund still exists, the fee schedule still stands, and the board still does its job.” The case goes back to the circuit court, where decisions of the Common Fee Review Board can now be reviewed. A companion petition for writs of mandamus and prohibition, SCPW-26-0000480, was dismissed as moot.

The order does not change the size of your award. That is set by the administrators according to your losses. What it changes is how much your lawyer can take from it. The schedule the Supreme Court left in place:

• Up to 3% if you hired your lawyer on or after August 19, 2024, the cutoff date in the court’s fee schedule.
• Up to 8.33% if you hired your lawyer before then.
• Up to 10% if your case was set for trial before the settlement.
• Up to 1% for lawyers whose clients went through the state’s One ʻOhana Fund.

Under this schedule a lawyer is paid “from the client’s own settlement recovery, through BrownGreer. No application. No hearing. No Board.” Because the deduction is automatic, the scheduled fees do not need a further ruling before payments start. A lawyer who wants more can ask the circuit court at a hearing, up to 3.5%, 10% or 12.5% depending on the tier. Any extra fee also comes out of that client’s recovery. The Star-Advertiser estimates the scheduled fees at roughly $200 million, or 5% of $4 billion.

The $222 million common-benefit fund is separate. It is set aside before distribution and divided by a board chaired by retired Associate Justice James Duffy, with retired judges Jeffrey Crabtree and Dean Ochiai. According to the Star-Advertiser, these fees are paid in the second, third and fourth years of distributions. Money the board does not award comes back to you: “What the Board does not award returns to the claimants in proportion to their net recovery.” If your retainer says 25% or 33%, the court-set cap is what governs now. Ask your lawyer for a written statement showing the gross award, the fee percentage and any other deductions before you sign anything.

There is no claim form, and there is nothing new to file because of this ruling. Claims were submitted through lawyers or directly to BrownGreer, and the opinion notes that “Many victims had never filed suit at all. They pursued their claims through BrownGreer.” If you have a lawyer, your payment and your accounting come through that firm. Make sure your firm has your current mailing address, phone number and bank details. If you do not have a lawyer, keep your contact details with BrownGreer up to date the same way you filed.

A large payout that is known to be coming soon attracts fraud. These rules are our advice, not an administrator’s notice, because we found no official public warning page for this settlement. Nobody legitimately charges you a fee to “release” or “speed up” your share; the lawyer’s fee is deducted under the court’s schedule. Do not give bank login details to anyone who calls or texts about the settlement. Call your own lawyer at a number you already have, not one given in the message. Be wary of anyone offering cash now in exchange for part of your award. Report suspected fraud to the Hawaii Attorney General’s office or the FBI’s ic3.gov.

The size of the gap is the reason for caution. Wong told the court that claims total $12 billion to $15 billion, against a $4.037 billion settlement paid over four years. Each installment is split pro rata by the administrators. The first one is the $1.1 billion already in trust, and the rest follow in yearly tranches. The Supreme Court’s ruling settles who controls lawyers’ fees. It does not fix a date, and it sends the case back to Judge Cahill for “further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

The losing side was critical. Samuel Shnider, who argued the appeal, had told Hawaii News Now that if a court can “retroactively overturn the fee terms of a settlement agreement and void all the fee agreements between attorneys and their clients three years into the process,” lawyers will have to change how they do business. Survivors are asking for something simpler. Hawaii News Now reports they are “begging the claims administrators to get payments out before the holidays.” Wong’s two-month estimate would just about meet that. We will update this page when BrownGreer or the circuit court announces the first distribution date.