More than 2,700 Native Hawaiians who allege the state has unfairly delayed leasing land to them will get a hearing in court today, nearly 10 years after filing their lawsuit.

Kalima v. State of Hawai'i is the first case to go to trial that asks if the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands has breached its trust obligations to Native Hawaiians, said Thomas Grande, an attorney representing the Hawaiians.

"The primary claim that's being asserted is that these beneficiaries were not awarded homesteads promptly and efficiently as is required by the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act," Grande said yesterday. "In some instances, they have waited 30, 35 years or more."

The lease program was established by Congress through the Hawaiian Homes Act of 1920 to return Hawaiians to the land. DHHL was tasked with administering the program, which leases homesteads to people with 50 percent or more Hawaiian blood.

Leona Kalima, one of the plaintiffs in the class-action suit, estimated more than 200 plaintiffs have died since the case was filed nearly 10 years ago.

The average age of the beneficiaries is over 60 and "some of them are quite elderly," Grande said.

The DHHL failed to provide homeland leases to beneficiaries in a timely manner and imposed rules that made it more difficult for them, Grande said.

The lawsuit was filed in December 1999, but an appeal by the state over whether the beneficiaries had a right to sue that went to the Hawai'i Supreme Court, as well as procedural hang-ups, delayed the trial until now.

The state has been criticized for decades for foot-dragging on awarding leases to beneficiaries.

Those complaints have continued to the present.

As of June 30, there were 19,886 Native Hawaiians waiting for residential leases. The 2,700 represented in the lawsuit consist of those who went before a state-appointed review panel created in 1991 to resolve claims for the period between Aug. 21, 1959, and June 30, 1988.

KANE'S TENURE

The Lingle administration, under DHHL Chairman Micah Kane, has claimed to have offered more opportunities to beneficiaries than the state has done in the past.

DHHL spokesman Lloyd Yonenaka said about 8,238 residential leases have been awarded during the life of the program — about 2,500 of them since Kane took over in late 2002.

The Lingle administration had set a five-year target of awarding 6,000 leases by the end of 2008.

Yonenaka said he calculated that an estimated 15,300 out of the 19,000 beneficiaries on the current residential list have received at least one offer of a lease but either couldn't or chose not to accept it.

Those who can't accept an offer often don't qualify for a mortgage, while others qualify but choose not to accept placement to the project being offered.

The class-action lawsuit claims each of the 2,700 individuals are entitled to, at minimum, compensation for the rent or mortgage they've had to pay during the years they have been waiting to be placed on Hawaiian Home Lands.

Exactly how much money it would take to compensate those on the list is unknown, Grande said. That would be determined in separate proceedings if the plaintiffs win their suit, he said.

THREE CLAIMS

The case, which is before state Circuit Judge Eden Hifo, is scheduled to run through mid-September.

The plaintiffs level three claims against the state — that it illegally withdrew trust assets, that it did not put resources into the trust that were needed for it to operate efficiently, and that, as a result, DHHL has been subject to administrative and financial mismanagement.

"The end result of this was an increase in the amount of time that people had to wait from several years to several decades," Grande said.

DHHL denies the claim that many beneficiaries have spent decades on the waiting list. Yonenaka said that, in the residential category, leases have been awarded to beneficiaries who signed up on the list as recently as 2005 on Kaua'i, 2006 on the Big Island and Maui, and 1998 on O'ahu.

"What has happened is that there are thousands of people who did not accept a lease," Yonenaka said.

Yonenaka also said DHHL has established a home ownership assistance program to help beneficiaries who cannot qualify for home loans.

DHHL has also been unable to contact more than 25 percent of the people on the list, he said.

Also, he said, more people who have seen or heard about the agency's recent successes have been added to the list.

"It's kind of a misleading list," Yonenaka said.