The last Kamehameha princess left her lands to a school, and a judge removed its trustees for self-dealing 115 years later

Bernice Pauahi Bishop was the last direct descendant of Kamehameha I. She refused the throne when King Kamehameha V offered it to her in 1872. In 1883 she inherited the lands of her cousin Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani, making her the largest landowner in Hawaii. Her will created a trust to found and run the Kamehameha Schools for Hawaiian children, with about 375,000 acres^†. The justices of the Hawaii Supreme Court appointed the trustees. In August 1997 the Honolulu Star-Bulletin published "Broken Trust", an essay by five community leaders accusing the trustees, paid close to $1 million a year each^†, of political appointments and mismanagement. The state Attorney General alleged self-dealing. The IRS threatened to revoke the trust's tax exemption. In May 1999 the probate court permanently removed trustee Lokelani Lindsey, three others were removed the next day, and the fifth resigned. The trust was renamed Kamehameha Schools in 2000. Its endowment was about $15 billion in 2022^†.