A genuine split worth noticing
Hawaii caps non-economic damages at $375,000 in almost any personal injury case under HRS § 663-8.7 — one of the broader damages caps nationally. But the state imposes no statutory cap whatsoever on attorney contingency fees, in any type of case, including medical malpractice. These are two entirely separate legal questions, and Hawaii's legislature chose to regulate only one of them.
It wasn't for lack of trying
Between 2008 and 2010, as part of the same legislative push that produced the current damages cap, lawmakers also introduced bills proposing a tiered fee limit specifically for medical tort cases. Unlike the damages cap, these fee-limiting provisions never made it into law — Hawaii's attorney fee rules remained governed solely by the general reasonableness standard in Rule of Professional Conduct 1.5.
A real contrast with Florida's constitutional approach
Florida caps medical malpractice attorney fees directly in its state constitution — a limit voters approved in 2004 that the legislature can't simply repeal through ordinary lawmaking. Hawaii has no equivalent limit of any kind, constitutional or statutory, for malpractice fees specifically, or for any other type of personal injury case.
Hawaii's position is actually the more common one nationally
Most states leave the contingency fee percentage to private negotiation between attorney and client, subject only to a general reasonableness standard. A cap of any kind — whether statutory, like several states' medical malpractice limits, or constitutional, like Florida's — is the exception rather than the rule. Hawaii's uncapped approach puts it in the majority on this specific point, even while being an outlier on how broadly it caps damages.