A three-year effort to unseal federal court records concerning allegations of corruption and misconduct in an elite Honolulu Police Department investigative unit was laid before three judges of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here yesterday as it met to hear Hawai'i cases.

Meeting in the seldom-used 9th Circuit courtroom on Bishop Street, the judges heard attorneys from the U.S. Justice Department and the City and County of Honolulu argue that Hawai'i Magistrate Judge Leslie Koba-yashi erred when she ordered that the records be opened to pubic view.

Attorney Jeff Portnoy, representing The Advertiser, argued that Kobayashi correctly conducted an "exhaustive if not exhausting" line-by-line review of hundreds of pages of records and determined that the bulk of them should be available to the public.

The appellate judges — Michael Hawkins, M. Margaret McKeown and Robert Beezer — questioned the city's decisions to appeal Kobayashi's rulings to the 9th Circuit without first appealing to a federal court judge in Honolulu.

The records were filed in a lawsuit filed by HPD detective Kenneth Kamakana in 2001, alleging that the department and the city improperly transferred him from the Criminal Intelligence Unit after he reported to the FBI allegations of wrongdoing by CIU officers.

The case was settled in December 2003 when the city, without admitting wrongdoing, paid Kamakana $650,000. But the legal fight over access to court records in the Kamakana case continued.

Hawkins told the parties yesterday that the matter would be taken under advisement with a decision to be issued at a later date.

Arguing for the city was Jerold Matayoshi, a private attorney whose law firm has been representing the city from the inception of the Kamakana suit. He was joined by U.S. Justice Department attorney Steven Frank, who argued that Kobayashi should have sealed small portions of some 19 records filed in the case.

When the city settled the suit with Kamakana, officials said the city had paid $1 million in taxpayer money to defend itself in the suit. Another $1 million was paid by the city's insurance company, which also paid the $650,000 settlement fee to Kamakana and his lawyers.

How much the city or its insurance company have paid since the settlement is unknown.

Attempts to obtain comment yesterday from the city Corporation Counsel's office were unsuccessful.

Corporation Counsel Carrie Okinaga — the city's chief civil attorney — has excused herself from involvement in the matter because she was one of Kamakana's lawyers before she left private practice to take the city post.

Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.