Background
Certified Construction filed suit in the Circuit Court of the First Circuit of Hawaii (Case No. 1CCV-24-0001317) against Andrew T. Kawano in his capacity as Procurement Officer and Director of the Department of Budget and Fiscal Services for the City and County of Honolulu. The nature of the underlying dispute concerned the city’s procurement process, though the merits were not reached on appeal.
Certified Construction filed a Notice of Appeal on September 19, 2025, bringing the matter to the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals. Before the appeal was docketed, the parties negotiated a resolution and filed a Stipulation for Dismissal of the appeal on May 29, 2026.
The Court’s Holding
The court approved the parties’ stipulation and dismissed the appeal pursuant to Hawaii Rules of Appellate Procedure Rule 42(a), which authorizes dismissal by stipulation before an appeal has been docketed. The court confirmed that the stipulation was properly dated and signed by counsel for all parties.
Each party was ordered to bear its own attorneys’ fees and costs on appeal, consistent with the terms of the stipulation. The panel — Presiding Judge Hiraoka and Associate Judges Wadsworth and Guidry — entered the order on June 18, 2026. The opinion is designated not for publication in West’s Hawai’i Reports and Pacific Reporter.
Key Takeaways
- The appeal was voluntarily dismissed by stipulation before docketing, so no merits ruling was issued on the underlying procurement dispute.
- Hawaii Rules of Appellate Procedure Rule 42(a) permits dismissal by stipulation at the pre-docketing stage, and the court applied it here without further analysis.
- Each side bears its own fees and costs on appeal, as agreed in the stipulation.
Why It Matters
This order carries no precedential value and resolves no substantive legal question — it simply closes an appeal that the parties chose to abandon. For practitioners, it is a routine illustration of Rule 42(a) dismissals in Hawaii appellate courts, confirming that a properly signed stipulation will be approved as a matter of course when the appeal has not yet been docketed.
Contractors and government agencies involved in Honolulu procurement disputes should note that the underlying circuit court proceedings in Case No. 1CCV-24-0001317 may still have significance, depending on how that matter was resolved, but no guidance on the merits of procurement law can be drawn from this dismissal order.