Greeting the not guilty verdicts with joy, former Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro, foreground, and prominent Hawaii businessman Dennis Mitsunaga celebrated their courtroom triumph after being acquitted of corruption counts Thursday at the U.S. District Court in Honolulu. -- (Keya Rivera/Courthouse News)

Judge tosses Hawaii corruption trial witness’ pay-for-prosecution civil suit

The civil lawsuit follows a federal corruption trial that ended with the acquittal of a former Honolulu prosecutor and local businessman accused of targeting an employee with false felony charges.

by Jeremy Yurow, Court House News, April 4, 2025

HONOLULU (CN) — An architect that was the center of Honolulu city prosecutor's federal corruption trial was dealt a blow in her civil suit against the prosecutor and her former employers, whom she accuses of a "pay-for-prosecution" scheme, after a federal judge ruled Friday many of her claims were barred by statute of limitations.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel ruled that Laurel Mau's key claims in a civil rights lawsuit were filed too late, and should have been brought within two years of the 2017 dismissal of criminal charges filed against her in 2014 — felony charges she says were filed in retaliation via bribing former Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro after she brought employment discrimination claims against engineering firm Mitsunaga & Associates.

The judge dismissed Mau's claims of malicious prosecution and of violations of her due process and unreasonable seizure rights against Honolulu and the engineering firm, along with its owner Dennis Mitsunaga and other employees she had accused of harassment and discrimination.

Mau had argued that the statute of limitations shouldn't have started until 2022, when a federal indictment first revealed an purported conspiracy between Kaneshiro and the engineering firm. Federal prosecutors had accused the engineering firm of funneling nearly $50,000 in campaign donations to Kaneshiro in exchange for prosecuting Mau. However, Curiel rejected this argument.

"Notice of the facts supporting malice was not a prerequisite for the cause of action to accrue. Accordingly, the court will not postpone the beginning of the limitations period from the date Mau’s prosecution was dismissed to the date when she learned that the prosecution was initiated with malice," Curiel said.

"Mau's malicious prosecution claim accrued on September 15, 2017, when the criminal charges against Mau were dismissed with prejudice," meaning her claim should have been filed by September 2019, Curiel added.

Curiel also found that Mau sufficiently claimed the firm and Mitsunaga acted jointly with state officials, and could be liable as state actors.

"The complaint alleges through a number of meetings, email and telephone conversations, defendant Mitsunaga recruited prosecutor Kaneshiro and after having recruited him, worked closely with him to allegedly conjure a false narrative that Mau worked on “side” jobs” to the harm of MAI and ultimately brought false criminal charges against Mau."

But the judge also said defendants defendant Chad McDonald and Aaron Fujii, employees of the firm who simply submitted a sworn statement and a police report, respectively, did not.

Another dispute centered on service of process. Sheri Tanaka, formerly the firm's attorney, argued for dismissal because she was not personally served. Despite evidence that Tanaka was in California at the time of the purported service in Hawaii, Curiel found that Mau had still substantially complied with court rules.

"Even though the evidence provided shows that Defendant Tanaka was not personally served, she received sufficient notice of the complaint and summons which is demonstrated by her filing a motion to dismiss the complaint,” Curiel said. 

The City and County of Honolulu successfully argued that Mau's claim based on Monell liability failed to state a claim. Curiel agreed that "the complaint fails to provide any allegations or authority that granted prosecutor Kaneshiro final policy-making authority."

During a February motion hearing, attorney Thomas Otake, representing McDonald, had said, "This has been going on for years now and needs to end, and putting the defendants through another couple of years of litigation just wouldn't be right." 

Mau's civil case follows a criminal trial that concluded in May 2024 with the acquittal of Kaneshiro and Mitsunaga & Associates executives on federal conspiracy charges. While prosecutors in that case claimed the campaign contributions were bribes meant to secure Mau's prosecution, a federal jury ultimately found that the donations were legitimate political contributions.

Mau now has until April 25 to file an amended complaint addressing the deficiencies noted in the court's order.