A LESSON IN HAWAII LAW
‘This could
happen to you’
One man caught in the
By Lori Tighe
'lawsuit-happy' system learns
the value of tort reform
Star-BulletinThe closest Robert Abbett ever got to the legal system was paying a parking ticket. Until one day at work a guy told him: "Do you know you're being sued?"
For fraud, in fact. The friend read about it in the newspaper a few weeks ago.
"I just about ditched my pants," recalled, Abbett, 44, who sells custom window awnings. "It flipped me out. I thought, 'Who have I frauded?'"
Robert Abbett
This began Abbett's eye-opening lesson about how anybody can sue anyone for anything. The experience converted him into joining an effort led by small businesses to fight for lawsuit-abuse reform in Hawaii.
Abbett is backing state Rep. Terrance Tom's bill to curtail what he calls Hawaii's lawsuit-happy environment.
"Tort is not something you eat," said Tom, momentarily joking. "We're talking about lawsuit abuse reform. All we're trying to do is make it fair."
Far and away from fair, the lawsuit slapped on Abbett "could be potentially disastrous to anyone," said the former radio personality.
State prisoner Richard Eline, serving 20 years for sexual assault and kidnapping, sued Abbett for his Web site, a Wrinkle in Time. Only Eline called it "Willow in Time."
Apparently the prisoner read about Abbett's brainchild Web site in the Star-Bulletin. Abbett had invited Web users around the world to shoot 360-degree digital pictures of their towns at exactly 9 a.m. Hawaii time, Dec. 21, 1997, the winter solstice. Wrinkle in Time, featuring photos from Paris, Greenland and Hong Kong, was covered by CNN and became a Pick of the Week Web site by Netscape, Yahoo and USA Today.
The Halawa Correctional Facility prisoner claimed Abbett defrauded Quicktime VR, the technology enabling people to take the 360-degree pictures. He also sued Abbett for: "staging an elaborate scheme to use a haiku and attempt to convince Web users that this was a modern poem."
"I thought this is somebody on crack watching court TV," Abbett said. "How bizarre."
The state dismissed the case because Eline failed to pay the $125 filing fee.
Abbett heard last week the same prisoner was suing him again for the same thing -- this time in federal court.
"This could happen to you," Abbett said. "We're talking about soiling people's reputations publicly. This is potentially disastrous to anyone."
Abbett, who works for Custom Contractors Inc., fears that potential customers will read he's being sued for fraud and may not want to do business with him.
Abbett doesn't want to take anyone's right away to sue. He just wants to give the judge the chance to dismiss it before it goes into public record.
Hawaii's reputation for being lawsuit-happy has repelled potential businesses from coming to the state, Tom said.
"We're in a tough economy, we're suffering," Tom said. "Ask business owners what are their three top priorities, and they'll answer: 1) fear of being sued, 2) fear of not knowing what the results will be, and 3) fear of the suit being frivolous."
While 47 states have changed their tort system, Hawaii has remained behind the times, said Geal Fukumoto, an investment representative with Edward Jones Co. on Oahu. She sits on a coalition to stop lawsuit abuse, because many of her clients are small businesses.
"The tort system has always been a reason why businesses don't move here," she said. "So many people who file frivolous suits want to get something for nothing. ... We've got to do something, or we'll see more businesses go to the mainland."
Fixing legal system
The tort reform bill's key points:
Multiple people being sued will pay their fair share of the claim, if found guilty.
