Minute books were kept by the clerks of the several divisions of First Circuit Court and contain summaries of court proceedings. Entries contain court date; court orders; names of attorneys, defendants, plaintiffs, and other parties involved; judgments; and sentences in criminal cases. The records include minutes of cases heard both in open court and in the judge’s chambers. Open court matters include accident (workers compensation), annulment, civil, criminal, divorce, equity, law, probate and small estate cases as well as grand jury reports. Closed proceedings (matters heard in chambers) include adoption, probate (guardianship), paternity (bastardy) and special proceedings cases (which involve such things as habeas corpus applications, mandamus, petitions to initiate judicial actions, and water rights cases). Some of the cases are appeals from District Court or Land Court.
The volumes also contain administrative matters such as applications for licenses to practice law, appointments of judges to the bench, appointments of court clerks, trial jury drawings, orders for official mourning for deceased government officials, and for continuation and adjournment of court terms.
Adoption, guardianship, and paternity cases may provide names of biological parents, adoptive parents, and guardians, as well as background information. Annulment, desertion and marital separation cases were sometimes filed as divorce or equity cases. In the early 1950's, most law cases were redesignated as civil cases. Divorce cases sometimes include indication of the ethnicity of the parties.
Civil, equity, and law minutes note court actions to adjudicate property claims and provide legal remedies in disputes. Issues include actions for injunctions, adverse possession, partition of land parcels, breach of contract, damages, contested deeds and wills, disputes over land titles, ejectments and evictions from property, quiet title actions, tax appeals, and water rights. For example, the law cases include breach of contract civil lawsuits resulting from the inability of businesses to collect from insurance companies for damages incurred during the Chinatown fires of 1900-1901; the equity cases include matters regarding large estates and trusts such as Bishop, Campbell, Queen Emma, Lunalilo, McInerny and others. Probate and Small Estate cases contain proceedings dealing with distribution of property and wealth of the deceased.
Criminal proceedings contain charges filed by the government against the defendant, defendant’s pleading, minutes of the trial, verdict, and sentence. Criminal cases of gambling, work stoppages, riots and bigamy among Chinese immigrants are a source of local history and social customs in the Territory of Hawaii. Volume 27 contains minutes of a 1909 trial of agricultural workers involved in a Waipahu labor riot (Criminal case 4611). Minutes of the 1932 trial (Criminal case 11891/”the Massie Case”) of Grace Fortescue, Thomas H. Massie, Edward J. Lord, and Albert O. Jones are in volume 116.