KEVIN P.H. SUMIDA, ESQ.
Kevin P.H. Sumida is a founding principal of Sumida Law, LLLC. After graduating cum laude from Case Western Reserve University with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, he obtained his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979.
While an undergraduate, he studied for a year in Tokyo, Japan as a foreign student at Waseda University. In 1978, he co-wrote studies for the Hawaiʻi State Constitutional Convention, some of which influenced the Convention to craft innovative constitutional protections for citizens, such as the creation of independent grand jury counsel and specific constitutional recognition of the right to privacy. He clerked for U.S. District Judge Harold M. Fong.
Sumida has been listed in Marquis Who's Who in American Law since 1990, Who's Who in the West for 1994, Who's Who in the World since 1993, and Who's Who in Emerging Leaders in America in 1992. In 2018, he was selected to receive the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. He was selected to be a Fellow in the American Bar Foundation, an honor limited to one percent of lawyers licensed to practice in each jurisdiction.
From 2016, he has been designated as a Hawaiʻi “Super Lawyer” in General Litigation, a recognition given to only the top 5% of his peers. And in 2013, his firm was recognized as a “Go-To Law Firm” at the Top 500 Companies, an exclusive distinction granted to less than 1% of the law firms in the nation.
Emphasizing complex cases, Sumida has defended lawsuits and claims in areas as diverse as derivative action, fire cause and origin, insurance bad faith, wrongful death and catastrophic injury, construction defects, product liability, admiralty, defamation, real estate, antitrust and legal malpractice. He has successfully tried to conclusion jury trials in a broad range of matters, ranging from slip and falls, to real estate disputes, to insurer bad faith, to maritime claims. He has served as an arbitrator both in private arbitrations and the Court Annexed Arbitration Program.
A leading appellate attorney, Sumida has written many winning briefs and argued many times before the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, as well as the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court and the Hawaiʻi Intermediate Court of Appeals. He was the lead author of the winning briefs in at least three landmark cases in Hawaiʻi, including Finley v. Home Insurance Company (rejecting the Cumis doctrine in Hawaiʻi), Miyamoto v. Wahiawa General Hospital (recognizing compensability for workers compensation benefits even for idiopathic injuries), and Arthur v. State of Hawaii (overturning 20-year appellate precedent pertaining to indemnity and defense obligations under construction contracts). He is also an accomplished trial attorney who has successfully litigated jury trials to conclusion in each of the circuit courts in Hawaiʻi and in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaiʻi.
From 2005 - 2022, Sumida was appointed by the Governor to represent the State of Hawaiʻi as a commissioner to the Uniform Law Commission, which drafts uniform state laws for consideration by the state legislatures.
