 Aloha, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Living Legend Lawyers. This is a program that is featuring the very best and most experienced of Hawaii's lawyers, profiles of the attorneys, and it's a half an hour interview. I am Howard Luke. I'll be your host this afternoon. I am so honored, so honored to have, as my guest this afternoon, Sherri Broder. Many of you may know her name. Many of you may know her personally. She certainly has been at the pinnacle of our profession, has practiced law for over 40 years, and so, Sherri, I'd like to welcome you to the program. Aloha, Howard, it's a pleasure to be on the show with you. Okay. Now, thanks. Well, we're friends, right? We are friends. Yes. And it's also good to see friends again. I know it's been a while because we both have our busy lives. Yes. All right. Now, Sherri has represented clients in the state of Hawaii for over 40 years, but that's not the end of the story. She has represented clients in the state courts in California, New York, other states, as well as far and wide throughout the world, in Singapore, in Switzerland, in the Philippines, and to cover all bases, I won't go through every country, but I will say also as a consultant for the United Nations. Is that correct? I was a consultant for the Small Island Pacific Nations at the United Nations, and I've also been a consultant to the Federated States of Micronesia to that permanent mission to the United Nations. Great. Sherri and I have something in common. We both spent a lot of time in Micronesia, but this show is not about me, although we may touch on some of our mutual experiences. I will say that her contributions to the practice of law and especially to justice for the underserved as well as for people who have been marginalized, have been victims of human trafficking, has been so extensive that I could just sit here for the next half hour and just read off her resume, and she wouldn't have to say anything. But we're not going to do that. I will refer our viewers to an interview that you had, I think it's about three and a half years ago in February of 2015 with Jay Fidel of ThinkTech. It was called Life in the Law, I believe. And that program, it was a wonderful program. I hesitate to invite our watcher viewers to Google it and look up that interview because I think my performance here, as the host will pale by comparison, it was a wonderful interview recounting all the great accomplishments of Ms. Broder over the years. So we won't do that. I will start from where Mr. Fidel, not where he left off, but will supplement what he questioned you about. There are many great cases that I think makes that show worthwhile and you are involved with the Heptachlor case, which is, of course, everyone of my generation knows about it. It took place in the 1980s, I believe, where a very ingenious cause of action, contract action against milk producers who were found to have violated the contract, I believe, by the introduction of Heptachlor, which is a pesticide, into the milk of dairy cattle. That in itself could take the rest of the show, we won't talk about that. And even more, even more notorious or prominent among your achievements is the verdict against the former president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, where you and your co-counsel received an award from a federal jury here in the United States District Court in the state of Hawaii by visiting Judge Breziding. And the verdict awarded the plaintiff class $2 billion, I believe, give or take a few million. No give or take. It was $2 billion. It was the $2 billion verdict. It sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but I would have everyone understand that the impetus for doing that case was really the difficulties that the plaintiff class suffered. Well documented and brought up in the trial. The money was actually secondary because I think it took some time to collect any amount of it, and yet you persisted, and for that I congratulate you and your co-counsel. Oh, thank you. Well, we worked very hard to collect money, and we did eventually collect about $28 million. We did do two distributions in the Philippines, of course. Most of our clients were on the impoverished side because it was easier to abuse them without any consequences, and we are still working on collecting more money. We have $40 million in New York that we're fighting over in both federal and state court. That case was decided here in Hawaii, and the judge here did award the $40 million to us, but that case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Philippine government took the position that our case was interfering with foreign relations of the United States of America, and so then the State Department also filed a brief supporting the position of the government of the Philippines, and so Chief Justice Roberts wrote an opinion setting aside the award of the $40 million to us, but not giving it to the Philippines, and then giving them an opportunity, time to bring their case to recover the monies, but they didn't, so then now we're in New York fighting over that money again, and we're also fighting over $26 million in federal court in New York over paintings that have been found. When Fernand Marcos was overthrown, a big truck came up to Imelda's townhouse on the Upper West Side of New York City, and they unloaded everything that was in the house, and where did it go from? She had Monet paintings and all kinds of very expensive famous paintings, so we're fighting over those funds, those paintings, who do those belong to, and how will the money be divided up? That's amazing. You could create your own museum. That's only said partially, but it's really tongue-in-cheek because it sounds like there were some, from what I understand, some pretty fabulous artworks that could have ended up in the Louvre, for example. Oh, yes. Well, one of them, the Monet water lilies painting sold for $40 million. She had that. Well, she had one of them. There's many of them, but that's like a discounted price because people weren't sure of the provenance of it, which is a big thing today in the world. So there's more paintings of other very famous artists. So has the continued litigation caused you to travel? Do you have to go to New York? Do you have to go to D.C., or do you travel, or do you have other people doing that for you? Well, one of my co-councils is located in Philadelphia, and we also have co-council in New York, so I have traveled to those locations, but it depends on the kind of hearing it is. And because, well, some of the cases is, some of the Merrill Lynch deposit cases in state court, but the artwork cases are in federal court. Because the way we found out about it is they sold the Monet painting, and they didn't pay taxes. So it was actually the taxing authorities that brought it to the attention of people that they had these paintings. So for that, today in federal court, most federal courts are very technologically savvy, and you can easily appear by telephone. Sometimes they have video conferencing facilities, and the judges are very generous in terms of allowing you to work that way. That's great. Well, so it's an IRS manifesto, like Al Capone Redox, right? Yeah, get to be careful whether you're taxing. Okay, well, you know, at some point I want to weave into our interview this afternoon, your wonderful life story with your incredibly wonderful husband, John Van Dyke. He was an international lawyer well known throughout not just Hawaii, and not just throughout the nation, but through the world. He had so many people who considered him their mentor in South Korea, in other countries. Certainly, he stood at the vanguard in the law of the sea and international law. And of course, I'm sorry that he suffered an untimely death, but you carry on his work. You're a director of the John Van Dyke Institute of International Justice, I believe. Is that right? It's the John Van Dyke Institute of International Law and Justice, but I find that people can't remember the whole name, so I've shortened it to John Van Dyke Institute. But the focus is international because, of course, John, you know, also taught constitutional law, and he was very active in that area. I wrote a book on juries, you know, on our first date. He said to me, what have you been doing? I said, oh, I've been backpacking in the Sierras, camping out and everything. So what have you been doing? He said, oh, I just finished my second book, which is on, you know, the selection of juries. But the institute concentrates on international law issues and human rights. Both you and John have so many great publications. I think your husband, of course, could write like the way that most of people would be writing up their shopping lists at Costco. He'd sit down and write a great treatise on international law. And I've read some of his work, a spectacular writer, both not only in the content, but also in the manner in which he wrote about the subjects that were in his interest at the time. You know, Sherry has practiced alongside or with so many attorneys of great note, including mentioned in the last interview you had with Charles Gary, I think the older generation of attorneys remember that he was among, if not the preeminent criminal lawyer in the 60s and 70s, and you worked alongside of him. Again, that was amply covered by the interview with Mr. Fidel. But you also worked with other people. You worked with the current Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts. Is that right? That is right. Tell us about that. Okay, well, you know, for many years I've done work for the Office of Foreign Affairs. In fact, for my entire professional career, I've done work for native Hawaiian people. And we brought a case that we believed because of the apology resolution where the U.S. Congress apologized for the illegal overthrow and the taking of the lands of the Hawaiian people and their sovereignty without their consent and without compensation. We thought, well, you know, it's time for a big settlement of native Hawaiian claims. And what we wanted to do was to try to do something similar to what had been done in Alaska. In Alaska, the Secretary of the Interior at the time, Udall, this was in the late 60s. They were claims by the native Alaskans to land that were unresolved. And so he put a moratorium on the sale of any lands in Alaska until the claims of the native Alaskans were resolved. Of course, in Alaska, the oil companies were very eager to start drilling. And they didn't like this moratorium on the sale of land because they wanted to buy lands, you know, and start drilling. So they went to Congress and got, you know, the Native Alaskan Claims Act passed in order to release the moratorium. So we sued for a moratorium here based on the apology resolution that the lands were taken without compensation and without consent, thinking that this would lead to, you know, some pressure to resolve some of the claims of the native Hawaiian people. We will continue with this after our break. Okay. This is fascinating. Okay. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. You can be the greatest. You can be the best. You can be the king. Come play and now your chest. You can be the world. You can be the war. You could talk to God. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaii Anna all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Welcome back. And we're with Sherry Broder, who is our guest today. Very honored to have her here. I think one of the things that people are quite interested in when they view cases that they may or may not be aware of is not only the content of the cases, but the character of the individuals with whom you may have worked. For example, I don't know if this is too much information, but did you get along with, how was John Roberts, our Supreme Court Justice? I'll tell you why I'm asking that. As a Chief Justice, of course, he is at the very top, the apex of the ivory tower. That doesn't mean that he's not a human being, but he certainly was more accessible, I think, when he was co-counseling with you. Well, he was actually a very nice person to work with. You know, those people that make it to that level of the law practice where they are what you call Supreme Court practitioners, US Supreme Court practitioners, I've had the opportunity to work with a few of them, and they've all had the absolute best manners, been very gracious in all respects, and I enjoyed working with John Roberts a lot. You know, I knew more about the facts about, you know, native law than he did, and especially law here in Hawaii, and he always acted like, you know, I really knew what I was talking about, and he was definitely going to listen. So I enjoyed working with him quite a bit, actually. He was a Solicitor General at the time? No, he was not. He did become a Circuit Court Judge first, and then he became a US Supreme Court Justice, but he, let me just tell you, when we got, we took the break, I didn't get a chance to tell you the end of the, what the case is about, because it's such a fascinating case. Okay, so we went and saw the moratorium on the sale of any lands from the public land trust here in Hawaii, because of course, you know, most of the state lands are lands from the Hawaiian Kingdom that were taken by the provisional government and then after the illegal overthrow, and then given to the territory, and then the territory it gave it to the state at the time of admissions. And so we were seeking this moratorium, and we did get a unanimous decision from the Hawaii Supreme Court upholding a moratorium and looking to many statements made by the Hawaii State Legislature and by the governors in terms of their commitment to the first people of our lands to talk about, you know, some reconciliation and resolution of the claims of the native Hawaiian people. So we did have a unanimous decision, but one thing that I learned when CERT was granted was that, okay, when CERT is granted, you're in trouble. CERT being granted means the case goes from a federal appellate court or a state court to the United States Supreme Court. Well, there is a direct appeal for a state from a decision of a state Supreme Court to the United States Supreme Court. There's a direct appeal, just in that very limited circumstance. And so, you know, we were advised strongly that you've got to get somebody who regularly practices before the court. Before the U.S. Supreme Court. You know, you have worked with so many attorneys whose names I know of, whose work I may or may not be somewhat familiar with, including an individual who was portrayed by John Travolta in a movie, a civil action, I believe, Jan Schlichman, also with a deputy solicitor general for President Obama. Is that right? Yes, I worked with Neil Katyal and I worked with him on another case involving the rights and entitlements of Native Hawaiians. That was State of Hawaiians versus OHA? That was... Okay, you know what? I've got to back up. The case that I worked on with John Roberts was rights versus kaitano. Right. That was the 15th Amendment case. The case I just described, I worked on with Neil Katyal. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's okay. That was the case, the state against OHA. State v. OHA. So that's when I worked on with Neil Katyal. But I just worked with him during the cert petition. You know, aside from working with attorneys and bringing cases in courts, you've also worked as an arbitrator. Now, the direction of the law, at least in Hawai'i and in most of our states now, is to move away from actual trials by combat in the courts to mediation arbitration. And you served... You're upstaging everyone once again because, you know, the arbitrators... I was a court-appointed court arbitrator, but you were an international arbitrator. And you still are. Yes, I am. What is that all about? Well, I had this one very interesting case where, you know, I think because I do teach international law and international ocean law at the law school, I was picked for this particular case. And it was the case where Taiwanese tuna fishing vessel went aground in a remote, atoll, Europek in the state of Yap in the federated states of Micronesia. And it was really an insurance dispute. You know, how much was Lloyd's of London going to pay? And of course, Lloyd's of London's been doing insurance policies for the maritime industry for the last 150 years. So they got a pretty tight policy that sewn up. So the Lloyd's of London pick Sir David Steele, who's a barrister, an English barrister in London, and he regularly gets picked by Lloyd's of London for these kinds of disputes. And I was chosen by the people of Europek. And the very interesting thing, we had to go according to the insurance contract which says that you have to use the 1996 Arbitration Act of England and Wales. And the unusual thing in the contract was that there were only two arbitrators. So what happens if you don't agree? And the way it worked was... So you were one of the two? I was one of the two. And who was the other? He was Sir David Steele. Did he have to have a white wig? We would meet once in a while by Skype, and he would be, yeah. He would be in a full regalia. He would be all ready to go. Did you have to dress like that, too? I don't have any wigs. Yeah, anyways. All right. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, so the way it worked was, when you issue a judgment or an order, the parties can't get it until they pay your bill up to that point. So if you don't agree and you don't issue an order, then you don't get paid. So we did issue one order, which we agreed on, but then when we got to the second order, we didn't agree. So the rules did provide a provision to pick a third arbitrator, but the other two parties had to... We could pick that person, but the other two parties first had to agree to go outside the insurance contract. There's no penalty kick, like in soccer. You're tired, right? No. Yeah. Gotta pick a third. But the parties wouldn't agree to the third arbitrator. So what's happened? Well, the case was going on simultaneously in the courts of the FSM and also then it ended up going on in the courts of Guam and it became a big logistical legal nightmare, you know, those procedures. No. In the end, the parties settled and then we got paid. Good. Good to hear that. Yeah. Okay, you know, I know you had a sterling career as a student. You went to Wellesley College. You were the top 10% at the University of California School of Law, and one of the things that is quite impressive for all of our listeners, our viewers, is the fact that you were the first woman president of the Hawaii State Bar Association. That was in 1993, wasn't it? It was. And I remember that, we actually spoke back then and, you know, you took a lot of thought in your part, a lot of considerations. So can you talk about how you arrived at you signed to throw your hat in the ring and winning? Well, you know, I had run before to be treasurer and after I got elected, Bill McCorstin had been involved in counting the votes and so he called me up and said, you got to run for president, you know, I know you can win. And so that sort of was the seed of the thought. I thought about it a little bit, but actually Helen Gilmore had run before me and she always jokes with me and says, you know, I, Sherry, you got to be president of the Bar, but I always tell her, hey, being a federal district court judge is a good consolation price. Senior United States district judge is not a bad gig. So, you know, you mentioned about your advocacy for Native Hawaiians. And no, I do know, and I think it's quite impressive that only three years out of law school and being in Hawaii, you became chief deputy attorney for the constitutional convention assigned to Hawaiian affairs. Right. How did you manage that with so little experience and being from, you know, a very distant state, state of Maine? Well, you know, I had worked for Jim Funaki at the house of the Hawaii State Legislature and we got along quite well and he was asked to be the chief attorney and he asked me to be the deputy chief attorney and I think the way I ended up with the Hawaiian Affairs Committee was that I thought it sounded like super exciting, that would be a great thing to do and I think that other the other lawyers thought maybe judiciary or legislature. Well, we're glad you did that. I'd like to hear more and you've managed to be counsel for OHA in many capacities, but we only have a little bit of time I've been told, so I'd like to ask you this. You know, I had Lole Chun-Hun and Eric Seitz on the show in the past and they emphasized that despite all the indications of younger lawyers, some of them, and even lawyers of, and maybe more so, lawyers of our generation having some difficulty in adjusting to some of the developments most recently in terms of the access to justice for the poor for the downtrodden. What words of wisdom if any could you tell our younger lawyers and tell me about that? Well, you know being a lawyer is a privilege and you can go to court and you can ask a judge to administer justice. That's a fantastic thing and I think as we look around today and we see so many homeless people we see how difficult it is to live in Hawaii how expensive it is we see many unfair things going on we see poor people being the subject of human trafficking we see pharmaceutical companies selling drugs that make people addicted and can cause them to die you know we have an epidemic of bad things happening and the courts can be a place to go to for relief and so I think today more than ever is a time for people to go study law, become lawyers and reach out to our community to help make our community a better place. You know Sherry Broder has sort of lived the dream that many young attorneys have to make a significant contribution to society to our local communities and to a larger community in her case to the world. Ms. Broder has spent decades now completely committed to achieving justice she's been basically a sole practitioner she shows you how someone can get together with other attorneys of mutual interest and achieve what is really the mission stage of the Hawaii State Bar Association which is to promote justice and ensure that everyone who is underserved can achieve some measure of justice in this world gosh I'm starting to get warmed up but it's wonderful to have you here we're going to talk after we go off the air alright and I'll see you at the bar dinner that's the Hawaii State Bar Association August 11th and it's a fundraiser and it's a fundraiser for poor people and projects where lawyers serve the poor I couldn't have said it better thank you so much everyone for joining us on this show of Living Legend Law is our guest Sherry Broder thank you so much