The lawyer for Katherine Kealoha, wife of Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha, in state court Tuesday attacked the character of her uncle, who filed a lawsuit against her.

The uncle, Gerard Puana, and Kealoha’s 95-year-old grandmother, Florence Puana, are suing Kealoha, a deputy city prosecutor, over approximately $148,000 left over from a reverse mortgage she arranged on her grandmother’s Maunalani Heights home. They are also suing over $70,000 in cash her uncle claims he gave his niece for safekeeping and to place in an investment hui.

Jurors heard opening statements in the state civil trial Tuesday.

Kealoha’s lawyer Kevin Sumida described Gerard Puana for the jurors as "a man with a very checkered past, spotty work history, the youngest of nine children, on disability for years, receiving disability income, (has) drug problems, living with his mother, 50 years old, constantly borrowing (money) from his mother."

In U.S. District Court last month, Chief Kealoha caused a mistrial in Puana’s criminal case when he testified that Puana had been charged and convicted of breaking into a neighbor’s house.

Puana was on trial for allegedly stealing the Kealohas’ mailbox. The U.S. Attorney’s Office later had the case dismissed and referred to the FBI accusations from Puana’s criminal lawyer that people at the Hono­lulu Police Department falsified and fabricated evidence for the criminal case.

The criminal lawyer, First Assistant Federal Defender Alexander Silvert, said the Kealohas falsely accused Puana of stealing the mailbox to discredit him in the civil case. He said Chief Kealoha then intentionally caused the mistrial to prevent a possible not-guilty verdict from negatively affecting his wife’s position in the civil case.

Silvert is watching the civil trial in case he has to represent Puana as a witness in a possible federal prosecution.

Sumida also told jurors Tuesday that Florence Puana wanted to conceal the reverse mortgage from her other eight children, including Katherine Kealoha’s father, because she had used most of the money to buy a condominium for Gerard, her youngest son.

He said the grandmother has no clear understanding and cannot remember what really happened. He filed a petition on behalf of Kea­loha asking the state Probate Court to appoint a conservator to stand in for the grandmother in the case. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

The Puanas’ lawyer in the civil case, Gerald Kura­shima, told the jury that bank records and letters support the uncle’s and grandmother’s claims that Kealoha spent the $148,000 and had paid the uncle some monthly returns on his investment.

Kealoha, 44, also testified Tuesday as the Puanas’ first witness. She said the money she spent was her own because she fronted the down payment on the condominium, paid rent to the sellers when the sale took longer than anticipated and even paid for the furniture. Kealoha said she had paid her uncle $600 on a monthly basis for work he did on her home renovation.