Court violates rules in sealing records, media attorney says

The mother of a Punahou School first-grader has sued the private institution over its attempt to expel her son because of the disruption stemming from his father’s troubles with the law.

But the lawsuit and other key documents in the court case are secret, according to online records.

The court allowed the mother’s attorney, Eric Seitz, to file the documents under seal late last month without holding a hearing or giving the public advance notice about the plaintiff’s request to keep the documents confidential, according to the online records.

Even the request to file the documents under seal and the order granting the request are themselves sealed.

A media attorney in Hawaii says the court’s actions appear to be contrary to two Hawaii Supreme Court decisions that spelled out the process judges must follow before closing proceedings or sealing documents that otherwise would be public.

“It appears to be a clear violation,” said Jeff Portnoy, who has represented various media outlets, including the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

The two Supreme Court decisions stated that judges must provide advance notice to the public and hold a hearing before matters could be sealed or closed, according to Portnoy.

The more recent decision stemmed from a challenge that Oahu Publications Inc., parent of the Star-Advertiser, made to the sealing of documents in a criminal proceeding on Hawaii island.

“When the court seals a document on the basis that it may contain personal information in violation of the Hawaii Court Records Rules, it should promptly issue a written order in the case giving notice of and briefly stating the reason for the sealing,” the justices wrote in the December 2016 decision in the OPI case.

The Star-Advertiser notified the court last week of the newspaper’s objection to how the documents were sealed in the Punahou case.

Judge Bert Ayabe originally had the case, but it was reassigned to Judge Gary Chang on Jan. 30. The order granting the sealing request was approved the same day, according to the online records.

The Punahou student’s father was arrested in June on suspicion of promoting pornography to a minor but was never charged in that case. He was accused of showing a porno­graphic video to a then-4-year-old girl at a sleepover with his son, according to a police report.

The man also was accused in another complaint filed with Nevada police earlier last year of sexually molesting a girl during sleepovers two years earlier in Hawaii, a police report says. He was not arrested or charged in that case.

Seitz declined comment on the lawsuit but said his client denies the allegations.

The Star-Advertiser is not naming the mother because that would indirectly identify the father and son. The newspaper generally refrains from naming people who are arrested but not charged.