This is common because our legal system is fucked up. Standard practice is to sue everyone remotely involved and let the judge throw it out as they see fit. Of course, the people tangently involved now need to spend money and effort making sure it gets thrown out.

They’re not going to get a judgment against her. Only question is how to make her whole at this point, and if trees were knocked down. That would require the cost of getting a comparable tree somewhere and putting it into the same spot with a reasonable chance to survive. You can imagine that gets quite expensive. In some states, it’s then treble damages, but I can’t find anything specific about Hawaii there. Possibly it doesn’t, since it doesn’t have the same forestry history that other states do.