Precedents Cited
Camara v. Agsalud
The court relied on Camara v. Agsalud for two foundational principles: (1) Hawaiʻi’s unemployment law
is “enacted for the beneficent and humane purpose of relieving the stress of economic insecurity due to unemployment,”
and (2) it must be liberally construed to accomplish that purpose.
Camara also exemplifies the high threshold for “misconduct”: even a workplace-relevant traffic infraction causing an accident
did not automatically establish the required “wilful or wanton disregard.”
Choi extends that protective approach to employer claims of “insubordination” and alleged service failures—requiring proof that
the conduct meets the regulatory definition, not merely that the employer was dissatisfied or chose to terminate.
Hardin v. Akiba
Hardin v. Akiba is the court’s principal comparator for misconduct proven through progressive discipline and notice.
In Hardin, repeated counseling and notice about absenteeism supported the conclusion that the final unexcused absence reflected
“wilful or wanton disregard” because the employee “knew or should have known” the job was in jeopardy.
In Choi, the court uses Hardin to underscore the opposite inference: where an employer’s own corrective-action document grants time to cure
and warns of termination only if noncompliance continues past a set date, terminating before that date undermines the claim that the employee
consciously disregarded a known risk of discharge for that conduct.
Keanini v. Akiba
Keanini v. Akiba illustrates that a single course of conduct can constitute misconduct when it entails a conscious decision
in the face of a known (or knowable) risk central to the job (e.g., driving uninsured leading to license suspension for a professional driver).
Choi distinguishes this “goes without saying” risk scenario from the disputed and evolving circumstances of airport operations and the employer’s own shifting deadlines.
Medeiros v. Dep't of Lab. & Indus. Rels.
Medeiros v. Dep't of Lab. & Indus. Rels. supplies two key rules:
(1) the employer bears the burden to prove misconduct, and
(2) “wilful or wanton disregard” does not require subjective malice; it is satisfied by “conscious disregard of a known (or which should have been known) risk.”
Choi applies Medeiros’s burden and culpability framework to hold Tachibana did not prove the requisite level of culpability:
the handbook incident was enveloped by employer delay and an unexpired cure deadline; the customer-service incidents did not, on this record,
show conscious disregard meeting the regulatory standard.
Flores v. Bd. of Land & Nat. Res. and Paul's Elec. Serv., Inc. v. Befitel
These cases provide the secondary appeal review framework under HRS § 91-14(g)—how courts sort issues into review of
conclusions of law, procedural issues, fact finding, and discretion.
Choi operationalizes that framework by treating the meaning of “misconduct” as a legal standard applied to facts and by rejecting agency and lower-court outcomes
that were unsupported under the governing legal definition.
For Our Rights v. Ige and State v. Kwong
For Our Rights v. Ige is cited as part of the court’s description of COVID-19’s governmental response and context.
State v. Kwong supports the court’s decision to take judicial notice of the pandemic’s response timeline “in the interests of justice”
even though it was not in the record—reinforcing that appellate courts may judicially notice widely verifiable public facts relevant to context.
Legal Reasoning
1) The governing “misconduct” standard is deliberately demanding
The court foregrounded HAR § 12-5-51(c), which excludes from “misconduct”:
“inefficiency, unsatisfactory conduct, poor performance because of inability or incapacity, isolated instances of ordinary negligence or inadvertence,
or good-faith errors in judgment or discretion.”
Misconduct requires “wilful or wanton disregard” or negligence so recurrent/severe as to show “wrongful intent or evil design.”
2) Handbook acknowledgment: employer delay + unexpired cure deadline defeats “insubordination” as misconduct
The court treated Tachibana’s claim as internally inconsistent with undisputed facts:
Tachibana’s tour guide assistant manager did not notify tour guides about the acknowledgment requirement until after the stated January 31 deadline.
The March 16 warning characterized Choi as “refusing” to submit something “due on January 31,” yet Tachibana’s own notice was late, implying flexibility.
Most significantly, Tachibana issued a “Progressive Counseling and Corrective Action Notice” on March 16 giving Choi until April 14, 2020
to submit “mandatory documents” and warning only that failure to comply by that deadline “may” lead to termination.
The DLIR appeals officer’s finding that she was told to comply “as soon as possible” was deemed clearly erroneous in light of the document’s explicit deadline.
Terminating Choi on March 30—before the employer’s own corrective deadline—made it unreasonable to infer the level of conscious disregard required by HAR § 12-5-51(c),
especially where Choi sought explanation of the at-will clause consistent with the handbook’s instruction to ask a supervisor.
3) Customer service complaints: insufficient proof of “wilful or wanton disregard” on this record
The court acknowledged an employer’s legitimate interest in maintaining relationships with TSA and airline partners.
But it emphasized the evidentiary and disciplinary structure: Tachibana did not include the February incidents in the March 16 written warning,
and it did not identify post-warning violations.
While some cases (e.g., Keanini, Medeiros) show that a single event can constitute misconduct, the court found these incidents did not rise to that level here.
The court also rejected the agency’s reliance on generalized references to “recurring” complaints when the record lacked written discipline history tied to those complaints,
and when the employer itself framed “insubordination” over the acknowledgment as the primary termination reason.
In short, the employer did not carry its burden to connect these disputed events to the stringent misconduct definition.
4) At-will employment is not the unemployment-benefits standard
The opinion repeatedly separates termination permissibility from benefits disqualification:
an employer may terminate an at-will employee, but benefits may only be denied if the employer proves “misconduct connected with work” under HRS Chapter 383 and HAR § 12-5-51.
This distinction prevents “at-will” from swallowing the unemployment statute’s humanitarian purpose.
5) Language access issues noted but not decided
The court did not reach Choi’s claims under HRS § 321C-3 because the case was resolved on the merits of “misconduct.”
Still, it flagged the constitutional gravity of language access, noting that HRS Chapter 321C and Judiciary Policy #12
“animate rights inhering in Article I, Section 5 of the Hawaiʻi Constitution.”