Practice Areas

What Hawaii Injury Claims Have in Common

Auto accident, medical negligence, and general personal injury claims are different in their facts and in the evidence they require, but in Hawaii they share the same legal skeleton. Each rests on proving four elements — a legal duty, a breach of that duty, causation, and damages — by a preponderance of the evidence, meaning more likely than not.

Damages in each area fall into the same two categories. Special damages are the losses that can be calculated: medical bills, prescription costs, and lost income. General damages are the losses that resist precise arithmetic, such as pain and suffering, mental anguish, and loss of enjoyment of life. Documenting the first category well is often what makes the second category credible.

The Two-Year Deadline

Hawaii sets a two-year limitations period for injury claims. HRS §657-7 provides that actions for the recovery of compensation for damage or injury to persons or property “shall be instituted within two years after the cause of action accrued, and not after,” subject to the exception in HRS §657-13. Medical torts are governed by a separate limitations statute, HRS §657-7.3, which runs two years from the date the injury is discovered or reasonably should have been discovered, with a general outer limit of six years from the act or omission complained of.

Deadlines are the one part of an injury claim that cannot be repaired after the fact, which is why the timeline is worth confirming early rather than late.

Shared Fault Under Hawaii Law

Hawaii applies a modified comparative negligence rule. Under HRS §663-31, contributory negligence does not bar recovery so long as the injured person’s negligence was not greater than the negligence of the person, or the aggregate negligence of the persons, against whom recovery is sought. Damages allowed are diminished in proportion to the injured person’s share of fault, and where that share is greater than the other side’s, the statute directs the court to enter judgment for the defendant.

Insurers understand this rule well, which is why the assignment of fault percentages is contested so early and so often in Hawaii claims.

Where the Three Areas Diverge

Motor vehicle claims run through Hawaii’s no-fault insurance system. Personal injury protection (PIP) benefits pay accident-related medical and rehabilitative expenses regardless of fault, subject to an aggregate limit of $10,000 per person under HRS §431:10C-103.5. A claim against the at-fault driver for general damages requires meeting one of the conditions in HRS §431:10C-306(b), which include death, a significant permanent loss of use of a part or function of the body, a permanent and serious disfigurement resulting in mental or emotional suffering, or PIP benefits incurred that equal or exceed $5,000.

Medical negligence claims add a procedural gate that does not exist elsewhere. Under HRS §671-12, an inquiry must be submitted to a Medical Inquiry and Conciliation Panel before suit may be commenced in any court of this State. Filing that inquiry tolls the applicable statute of limitations until sixty days after the panel terminates, and the limitations period resumes if proceedings are not completed within twelve months (HRS §671-18).

General personal injury claims — premises and negligence matters among them — proceed without either of those layers, but they still turn on the same four elements and the same two-year deadline.

Claims brought after a death sit slightly apart from all three. Hawaii’s wrongful death statute, HRS §663-3, enumerates who may bring the claim — a surviving spouse, reciprocal beneficiary, children, parents, and anyone wholly or partly dependent on the deceased person — lists the losses that may be recovered, and sets its own two-year period running from the date of death rather than from the date the cause of action accrued.

Why Early Steps Matter in Every Area

Whatever the category, the evidence that decides an injury claim tends to be perishable. Vehicles are repaired or scrapped, surveillance footage is overwritten on a fixed cycle, roadway and premises conditions are changed, witnesses move, and memories fade. Medical records tell a cleaner story when treatment is consistent and the gaps are short, because insurers routinely read a delay in care as evidence that an injury was minor or unrelated.

None of that requires filing a lawsuit right away. It does mean that the practical value of documenting what happened — photographs, names and contact details for witnesses, bills, referrals, and out-of-pocket receipts kept in one place — is highest immediately after an incident and declines steadily from there.