Background
Ten plaintiffs — Anxin Shen and nine co-plaintiffs — brought suit in the Circuit Court of the First Circuit of Hawaii against Hawaiian Islands Regional Center, LLC, Benjamin Meeker, and Andre Hurst (Case No. 1CCV-23-0001280). The circuit court entered a judgment on May 13, 2025, and the defendants-appellants timely appealed that judgment to the Intermediate Court of Appeals.
While the appeal was pending, the appellate court apparently granted a temporary remand to the circuit court. On that remand, the circuit court entered an order vacating the May 13, 2025 judgment pursuant to Hawaii Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 60(b). With the judgment vacated, the appellants themselves moved to dismiss their own appeal on June 1, 2026, citing the absence of any remaining appealable judgment. No opposition was filed.
The Court’s Holding
The Intermediate Court of Appeals granted the appellants’ motion and dismissed the appeal. The court reasoned that appellate jurisdiction depends on the existence of an appealable judgment in the underlying record. Because the circuit court had vacated the May 13, 2025 judgment on temporary remand, no such judgment remained, and the jurisdictional predicate for the appeal no longer existed.
The dismissal was entered by Chief Judge Nakasone and Associate Judges Wadsworth and Gluck. The order is designated not for publication in West’s Hawai’i Reports and Pacific Reporter.
Key Takeaways
- A Rule 60(b) vacatur of the judgment being appealed eliminates the appellate court’s jurisdiction, requiring dismissal of the pending appeal.
- Where an appellate court grants a temporary remand and the trial court vacates the underlying judgment, the appeal becomes jurisdictionally defective and must be dismissed.
- Appellants who obtain vacatur of an adverse judgment on remand should promptly move to dismiss their appeal, as the absence of an appealable judgment is a threshold jurisdictional bar.
Why It Matters
This disposition illustrates the interplay between Rule 60(b) post-judgment relief and appellate jurisdiction. When a trial court vacates a judgment — whether on its own motion or at a party’s request — any pending appeal from that judgment is rendered moot because there is no longer a final, appealable order for the appellate court to review. Practitioners should recognize that securing vacatur on remand simultaneously resolves the appeal, but also requires a formal dismissal motion to close the appellate docket.
For EB-5 and other investor-plaintiff cases involving regional centers — the apparent nature of this dispute given the parties — the case is a procedural reminder that appellate posture can shift dramatically when trial-level relief is obtained mid-appeal, and that parties should monitor remand proceedings closely to address jurisdictional consequences promptly.