Attorney tackling big cases driven to change the system

Bridget Morgan fires off quotes like arrows.

About the City Council’s tainted rail votes, Morgan said, “This was an institutional failure. We’re not talking about one or two measures. We are aware of over 100 bills and resolutions where Council members didn’t disclose conflicts prior to voting.”

About Pacific Resource Partnership, a consortium of unions, she said, “PRP is a repeat offender. Although they have been fined in the past, made to publicly apologize and disband super PACs previously operating under various names, they continue to make a mockery of campaign laws.”

In just the last month, Morgan has appeared in the paper and on the evening news as the attorney in some high-profile cases, suing the Honolulu City Council on behalf of Abigail Kawananakoa, and filing a complaint with the state Campaign Spending Commission against PRP, alleging it illegally plotted with a Maui County Council candidate to unseat his opponent.

There are attorneys in this town who get so much media attention that one case just blends into the next, and who are happy to be quoted on cases that aren’t even theirs. Morgan has emerged more focused, as though armed with a bow and a keen eye rather than taking a shotgun approach.

Morgan, 35, is not new to Hawaii, though she moved back to the islands in December to join the Bickerton Dang law firm.

She grew up in Seattle, the child of two public-school teachers who sent her to a private school — Lakeside, which is also Bill Gates’ alma mater. Her grandmother had lived for a time in Hawaii, in a house on Hausten Street near The Willows restaurant. Morgan grew up hearing her grandmother speak lovingly about her time in the islands, and perhaps that planted the seed.

She went to Seattle University for her undergraduate degree, and found her calling when she attended a lecture on campus by Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “He talked about how he managed to seek and destroy the KKK through landmark litigation,” Morgan said. “I remember being in that auditorium and making the decision — I was determined to go to law school.”

She attended Boalt Hall, the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, graduating in 2005. Morgan said she spent much of her first year of law school “getting out there and protesting and closing down bridges and things.”

After law school, she said, “I was determined to avoid the traditional on-campus interviews for corporate law firms” and instead she headed to Hawaii, where she has worked for the Legal Aid Society, serving as a guardian ad litem for foster children through the AmeriCorps program.

“I had 50 cases and 150 kids,” she said. “It was my job to represent the children’s best interests in Family Court.”

She spent a lot of time driving all over the island to visit the children, see how they were living and talk to their caregivers. “You really have to understand the people you’re representing. I realized that when I was with Legal Aid. You can’t fully do your job and be a zealous advocate without knowing the lives of your clients.”

After two years, “my student loans were coming due,” she said. So she went to work for Perkin & Faria and then Klevansky Piper Van Etten. In 2010, she moved back to Seattle, where she worked at Bush Strout & Kornfeld, a commercial bankruptcy firm. She kept some of her Legal Aid clients pro bono until their adoptions were finalized. “I will always have a desire to work on their behalf,” she said of children in the foster care system.

She worked for three years to draft a new tort protocol that would give foster kids the right to bring claims for injuries they sustained in foster care. Her work, co-authored with Steve Lane, was presented to the Hawaii Supreme Court in 2013, and though it was rejected, Senior Family Court Judge R. Mark Browning implemented a version of the new policy, which was lauded by child advocates.

Currently, in addition to suing the City Council and taking on PRP, she is working on wrongful foreclosure cases. “Thousands of people lost their homes through improper, nonjudicial foreclosure sales,” she said. “Buying a home is the largest investment most people will make in their lives.” Two of the cases are before the Hawaii Supreme Court awaiting judgment.

Though her online bio describes her practice as “broad litigation” and she has focused on commercial, real estate and bankruptcy, when she talks about her professional goal, she goes back to her theme of social justice. “I would really like to be a part of major change in the structure here and the transparency of local government, to be a part of people getting more power back from government.”

Her plans are to stay in Hawaii, to continue her career here. “Being multiracial, I never really felt like I belonged. Never white enough, never black enough. I’m also American Indian. I felt I lacked belonging in any sort of community. Here, I immediately felt accepted. Hawaii feels like home to me.”

Morgan isn’t playing for the bull’s-eye quotes or the media attention and says she has no desire to ever run for political office. Her ambition isn’t external and glittery that way. It’s quieter and focused.

As she walks down the hall of the downtown law office, the winged tattoos on her back are visible just past the armholes of her dress. They’re sparrows in flight; for her, symbols of freedom and authenticity. “My dad used to always say — about race and acceptance — ‘You rise above it when you’re authentic and stay true to yourself. Carve out and walk your own path, and all of that other stuff will become meaningless.’”

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.