After a motorcycle police officer was killed in a Farrington Highway traffic accident nearly four years ago, his father sought historical crash records to try to prove the state knew the highway was dangerous yet failed to fix it.

The state and city attempted to block the father's search but lost in court.

The police records that a judge ordered the city to disclose showed that the stretch of highway where Officer Ryan Goto and 10-year-old Alacia Williams lost their lives in a July 2003 median-crossing crash had been the scene of multiple other median-crossing accidents in recent years.

Goto, riding in formation with four other motorcycle officers, and Williams, on a Girl Scout outing, died after a car slowed to avoid a cardboard box that fell from a pickup truck, was hit from behind, crossed the grassy median and veered into the path of oncoming traffic.

Two other officers, David Bega and Paul Javier, were injured in the accident.

Alan Goto and the two injured officers sued the state, accusing it of negligence for not addressing dangerous conditions along that stretch of Farrington.

The Goto case, which is still pending, illustrates what plaintiff attorneys say has been a largely failed strategy by the city and state. The courts repeatedly have rejected arguments of government attorneys who have sought to keep crash records from plaintiffs. The plaintiffs typically are trying to prove government negligence because of faulty road design, maintenance or other factors.

While the government has prevailed in some of the records challenges, keeping the crash data under wraps, the state has lost a substantial majority of those fights, according to plaintiff lawyers and Attorney General Mark Bennett. Plaintiff attorneys say the city has a similarly poor track record. But the city didn't respond to repeated requests for comment.

Given the thousands of crashes that occur statewide each year, the issue has wide importance beyond the courtroom because the data can help show how government responds to particularly dangerous or accident-prone sections of Hawai'i's road system. That's especially the case because the state, concerned about losing costly lawsuits, for years has been unwilling to make public the locations with the highest number of crashes.

It has paid some multimillion-dollar judgments after losing the access fights and then losing the lawsuits.

The government's poor record in these access fights goes back years. Plaintiff attorney Andy Weiner recalls prevailing in cases dating to the 1980s.

In more recent years, plaintiff lawyers say their government counterparts continue to make largely the same arguments and get largely the same results.

"If private attorneys kept doing what they're doing, they'd deserve to be sanctioned big time," said plaintiff lawyer Chuck Crumpton.

ACCESS BLOCKED

The state's efforts to block access to crash data in court cases reflect what has been its broader practice in the public arena of keeping a tight lid on accident information. The Department of Transportation, which maintains a massive database on all major crashes in Hawai'i, has severely restricted or blocked access to that data, even though the Office of Information Practices, the agency that oversees the state's open-government laws, determined such information is public.

Last week, however, the DOT seemed to change its tune, saying it plans to provide access to The Advertiser to records for nearly 400,000 crashes dating to 1986. The agency previously had resisted the newspaper's attempts to get the data. The department also said, in a change from past statements, that its policy is to release any data considered public, including accident locations.

At the center of the state's historical stinginess with crash data — both in the legal and public arenas — is a federal statute that was designed to ensure government agencies compile such data to improve public roadways and safety. The law generally specifies that crash data compiled for purposes related to making road improvements cannot be used in litigation against a state.

Even though the 1987 law has been amended to sharpen its focus and the U.S. Supreme Court has weighed in on the issue, providing more clarification, ambiguities still exist, leading to differences in how states apply the law.

Some states actually waive their protections under the law so they can use crash data to defend themselves in litigation, according to an October 2006 report by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. Even though such a strategy allows plaintiffs to use the data as well, those states believe the information is more valuable as a defense, the report said.

Many other states believe the law doesn't provide sufficient protections against use of data in court cases, according to the report.

Jeff Rickard, a California attorney who has done crash-related litigation for 20 years, said accident information has been routinely released in the states where his firm has dealt with this issue, including California, Florida, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada.

"I can't think of a time they've challenged it," Rickard said. "We've made the requests, and we've gotten the data."

WASTED RESOURCES?

In Hawai'i, however, the information usually doesn't come without a fight.

Bennett said the state frequently challenges plaintiffs' attempts to get crash data in highway accident cases.

Although the state has lost a "substantial majority" of those challenges, Bennett said he doesn't consider that an indication Hawai'i is overreaching in applying the federal law. The state wins some cases outright, while the rulings in others contain elements favorable to both sides, he added.

Until an appellate court rules otherwise, Bennett said, the state will continue to challenge the release of data if it believes the federal law applies — and even if it believes the judge likely will rule against the state. To do otherwise, Bennett said, would waive the state's right to appeal the issue to a higher court. The state has yet to file such an appeal.

"The fact that we lose an issue in the lower courts will not dissuade us to do what we believe the law requires," he said.

Plaintiff attorneys say the state and city waste resources and the court's time when they repeatedly make the same arguments and repeatedly get rebuffed.

"Why fight it every time?" said attorney Scott Saiki of the law firm Bickerton Saunders Dang & Sullivan, which represents Goto and the two police officers. "It's a waste of time."

In the Goto case, both the state and city argued that police accident reports were compiled for purposes related to traffic safety and thus were protected under the federal law from being disclosed to the plaintiffs.

But Saiki's firm argued that the police reports were used for other purposes as well and therefore not subject to the protections. The court agreed and ordered the city to turn over 10 years of police reports.

The documents showed that 25 median-crossing accidents along Farrington Highway occurred from 1993 to 2003 within one mile of the site where Goto and Williams were fatally injured in a chain-reaction crash, according to a summary of the reports by Saiki's law firm.

One accident was eerily similar to the July 2003 incident.

At almost the same spot in 1995, a piece of furniture fell from an eastbound truck, prompting two trailing cars to brake and swerve, according to the report summary. A third vehicle also swerved, crossed the median and collided with two oncoming cars. No one was injured.

Attorney Jim Krueger, who recently obtained a favorable records ruling against the state in a Maui pedestrian fatality case, said the importance of having accident data public goes well beyond the courtroom.

If someone were interested in opening a business at a particular intersection or if a resident were interested in buying a home near there, they should be able to find out if that intersection has had a high number of accidents, Krueger said.

"Absent serious public security issues, there should not be government secrecy," he said.

Reach Rob Perez at rperez@honoluluadvertiser.com.