HEI board accused of skimping on safety

A lawsuit filed Monday by a Hawaii Electric Industries shareholder accuses the board of directors of not spending enough on wildfire prevention measures on Maui in the three years before the Aug. 8 fires killed at least 115 people and leveled Lahaina.

From 2019 to 2022, the investment in wildfire-specific projects on the island by the utility was less than $245,000, according to regulatory filings cited by attorneys for HEI investor Christina Rice.

The suit seeks to hold all 13 members of the HEI board and its subsidiary Hawaiian Electric Co. liable for the death and destruction caused by the Lahaina fire. It alleges breach of fiduciary duty, abuse of control, corporate waste and unjust enrichment.

Hawaiian Electric did not seek state approval to raise rates to pay for broad wildfire-safety improvements until 2022, according to the civil action.

Addison Bonner, one of Rice’s attorneys, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the HEI board had a fiduciary obligation to Hawaiian Electric and the people of Hawaii, including shareholders, to ensure that the company operated in a safe manner.

Retired U.S. Navy Adm. Thomas Fargo is chair of the board of HEI, and Timothy Johns, a businessman and attorney, is the HECO board chair.

“The board was obligated to adopt and implement risk mitigation measures aimed at preventing fires sparked by power lines. The information we have gathered and reviewed indicates the board failed to take sufficient action,” Bonner said. “Hawaiian Electric’s regulatory filings and other documents show the board knew about the enormous wildfire risk that existed for years prior to the Aug. 8 fire due to the company’s obsolete and dangerous equipment.”

HEI has contracted with Joele Frank, an investor relations firm with offices in San Francisco and New York that has experience managing crises like the 2017 Northern California wildfires and the 2018 Camp Fire. HEI has worked with Joele Frank on a wide range of issues on and off for more than 12 years.

“This lawsuit largely repeats what other complaints to date have alleged,” the company said in a statement. “Hawaiian Electric is focused first and foremost on the recovery and rebuilding effort and has been executing on a resilience and wildfire mitigation program to meet the challenges of extreme weather events. With respect to evidence, Hawaiian Electric has taken extensive measures to preserve it and provide all interested parties access to it,” according to a statement from HEI.

HEI’s stock closed at $13.31 when trading ended Wednesday.

Bonner and La Jolla, Calif.-based attorneys Francis Bottini Jr. and Yury Kolesnikov filed a verified shareholder derivative complaint in 1st Circuit Court on Monday.

Bonner said for years the board failed to adequately adopt, implement and fund an effective risk mitigation plan and act quickly to implement it.

Instead of spending necessary funds to prevent fires caused by its equipment, the utility “instead spent millions of dollars towards efforts to achieve a 100 percent renewable energy goal.”

The complaint alleges that HEI and HECO board members broke their fiduciary responsibilities by “wrongfully diverting millions of dollars of corporate funds away from safety, maintenance, and operations projects, the foreseeable result of which was the occurrence of the Maui Fire …”

“Hawaiian Electric’s Board of Directors has refused to make urgently needed repairs to the company’s electrical infrastructure and has prioritized profits over safety. As a result, the directors have enriched themselves — and destroyed Lahaina,” reads the civil complaint.

Monday’s filing is the latest in a slew of lawsuits against the utility by fire victims, shareholders and Maui County.

The lawsuit also alleges that last year the company sought approval to spend more money on wildfire prevention.

HECO filed an application with the PUC that acknowledged that “the risk of a utility system causing a wildfire ignition is significant,” according to the complaint, which quotes the PUC filing.

HECO told the PUC it needed the money to ensure its facilities were not “the origin or a contributing source of ignition for a wildfire.”

“Despite recognizing the acute risk, the defendants failed to take action to immediately rectify the material deficiencies at Hawaiian Electric,” reads the complaint. “Critically, Hawaiian Electric failed to adopt and implement a power shutoff system that could have prevented the Maui fire.”

HECO has maintained that like most utilities in America, it does not have a power shutoff plan like the ones mandated in California in the aftermath of fatal wildfires.

The complaint alleges that the HECO and HEI board members “routinely cut the safety and maintenance budgets requested by the company’s own internal experts and staff.”

The companies allegedly created a “policy of saving money regardless of consequences, incentivized employees not to document or to minimize safety and maintenance problems, ignored problems of which they were aware, and used the mirage of short-term financial gains that these practices created as a basis for inflating their own compensation.”

They did so “knowing it would increase the risk of devastating fires.”