Mayor Carlisle names Corporation Counsel choice

HONOLULU — Mayor Peter Carlisle today announced his nomination of Robert Carson Godbey as Corporation Counsel for the City and County of Honolulu.

“He is eminently qualified for this challenging and demanding job as the city’s top lawyer, and I have every confidence that we will be in good hands,” Carlisle said.

The nomination is subject to City Council confirmation. Godbey is currently a member of the Godbey Griffiths law firm in Honolulu, where his practice emphasizes technology law and intellectual property matters, and general commercial litigation.

He graduated cum laude in 1980 from the Harvard Law School, where he was a teaching fellow and associate with the Harvard Program on Information Resources Policy. He was in private practice for four years in Washington, D.C., with an emphasis on commercial and intellectual property litigation and administrative practice before the FCC.

Godbey spent the next seven years with the United States Department of Justice, as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and then for the District of Hawaii, where he concentrated on white collar fraud and computer fraud. He prosecuted the “Coconut Connection” case, which Forbes magazine identified as one of the largest telecommunications fraud cases on record.

He was lead trial attorney on over thirty cases tried to verdict, and received commendations from the Department of Justice, the United States Secret Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Chief Postal Inspector. Godbey left the Department of Justice and joined his present firm in 1991. He is an “AV” rated lawyer by Martindale-Hubbell, and has been listed for several years in Honolulu Magazine’s list of “Hawaii’s Best Lawyers,” and the related reference, “Best Lawyers in America.” 

Godbey is also a member of the Board of Bar Examiners for the State of Hawaii. He served as a member of the Hawaii Supreme Court’s Standing Committee on Criminal Jury Instructions for more than a decade. He is serving his second term as treasurer of the Hawaii State Bar Association and is a past chair of the HSBA Intellectual Property Section and the HSBA Technology Committee.