Association of Apartment Owners of Royal Aloha v. Certified Management, Inc., 139 Haw. 229

Royal Aloha is a mixed-use condominium where AOAO installed electricity submeters and contracted managing agents (Chaney Brooks, then CMI) to read and bill unit owners; from 1998–2010 commercial unit C-1 was never billed and C-2 was partially billed for C-1’s usage.
AOAO sued CMI and Chaney Brooks for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, negligence, negligent misrepresentation, and related claims; AOAO sued commercial tenants (Bruser, Tokyo Joe’s, and the McCormacks) for indemnification and unjust enrichment, among other claims.
Defendants pleaded laches (and other defenses); Bruser and Tokyo Joe’s obtained partial summary judgment that they were not obligated to indemnify AOAO for unbilled electricity.
CMI moved for summary judgment based on laches, arguing AOAO unreasonably delayed (10+ years) and defendants suffered severe prejudice (lost witnesses, destroyed records); circuit court granted summary judgment for all defendants on laches grounds.
The ICA reversed in part, holding laches applies only to equitable claims and not to legal claims for money damages, and remanded for statute-of-limitations and other determinations; the Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether laches is limited to equitable claims	Adair: laches is an equitable doctrine and does not apply to actions at law	Laches applies in merged-law jurisdictions to bar legal claims too; AOAO waived argument that laches is equity-only	Laches is available in all civil actions (legal and equitable); court adopts modern trend and affirms summary judgment on laches
Whether ICA should have reached the laches-scope issue despite preservation	AOAO relied on Adair and raised the issue on appeal	Defendants argued AOAO waived the argument by not pressing it below	Appellate courts may address de novo legal questions; ICA properly addressed the laches applicability issue
Whether circuit court’s factual findings on delay and prejudice were sufficient	AOAO did not dispute factual findings on delay/prejudice on appeal	Defendants showed unreasonable delay and severe prejudice (lost witnesses, purged records)	AOAO did not challenge factual findings; the court affirmed that those findings supported laches-based dismissal
Whether laches can bar claims for money damages	AOAO contended statute of limitations governs legal claims, not laches	Defendants cited federal and state authority applying laches to legal claims after merger of law and equity	Court held laches can bar claims for money damages in jurisdictions where law and equity merged, including Hawai‘i

Adair v. Hustace, 640 P.2d 294 (Haw. 1982) (describes laches as an equitable doctrine that bars equitable actions)
Ass’n of Apt. Owners of Newtown Meadows v. Venture 15, Inc., 167 P.3d 225 (Haw. 2007) (addressed laches in negligence action and declined to conclusively limit laches to equity)
Thomas v. Kidani, 267 P.3d 1230 (Haw. 2011) (treated applicability of laches to legal claims as an open question and analyzed assuming applicability)
Maksym v. Loesch, 937 F.2d 1237 (7th Cir. 1991) (explains modern trend of applying laches to legal claims after merger of law and equity)
Teamsters & Employers Welfare Trust v. Gorman Bros. Ready Mix, 283 F.3d 877 (7th Cir. 2002) (equitable defenses like laches can be available in suits at law)
A.C. Aukerman Co. v. R.L. Chaides Constr. Co., 960 F.2d 1020 (Fed. Cir. 1992) (federal precedent on laches as a defense in law and equity)