NMTI sidesteps legal liability

The Northern Marianas Trades Institute doesn’t want to get sued so it moved ahead with its reopening last Jan. 4, instead of reopening in February, as was suggested by Gov. Ralph DLG Torres.

Speaking at NMTI’s board meeting at their facility in Lower Base last Jan. 7, NMTI chair John Oliver Gonzales said that NMTI classes that were abruptly suspended last March due to the COVID-19 pandemic need to be finished. Resuming those suspended classes will allow NMTI to sidestep any potential legal liability of students potentially suing the school and its administration, he said.

NMTI’s situation, he said, is unlike that of the Northern Marianas College and the Public School System. “As an educational institution, we are different. We must open our doors, because…we have commitments and liabilities that we must fulfill and complete,” said Gonzales.

Gonzales told Saipan Tribune that if NMTI took the advice to open up at a later time, this will leave a window for students to sue the administration for depriving them of an education and/or getting a certificate that can help them get a better salary.

NMTI chief executive officer Agnes McPhetres echoed Gonzales, saying that when students register with NMTI, it is a contract between the students and NMTI.

“For example, the contract between the Public School System and us [NMTI] to train their individuals in the electrical [field]. We did not finish [the class but] they already paid us. So that’s a liability,” said McPhetres, adding that the NMTI board wants to clear up any liability/debt before transitioning to the board of trustees that will be the governing board of NMTI when it transitions into the Northern Marianas Technical Institute. Right now, NMTI is considered a non-government institution; it will become a government agency when it becomes a technical institute.

“Our board of directors wants to clean that up, so that we can say, we have fulfilled all of our obligations, therefore you have a clean slate. …So we went ahead and opened the school,” said McPhetres.

Torres earlier advised NMTI to resume classes in February so that the current nonprofit board of directors have a window to “dispose of any and all liability and debt” for the upcoming board of trustees.

“When the board of trustees assume their governance authority under the new public government technical institute, they [will] start with a clean slate, zero debts, zero liability, and so in upholding our fiduciary trust and responsibility, we must dispose of current liabilities and the debt,” said Gonzales.

According to McPhetres because NMTI hasn’t transitioned to a government board and is currently a private board, the board of directors can make their decision based on what’s best for the institute, which is another reason why they went ahead and opened their doors last Jan. 4.